Quality of life (QOL) and life satisfaction are important research priorities for autistic adults. As such, we saw a need to evaluate individual items of commonly used subjective QOL scales to understand how they are interpreted and perceived by autistic adults. This study used cognitive interviews and repeated sampling to evaluate the…

Purpose: To evaluate Chan, Gelman, Ditchman, Kim, and Chiu's (2009) revised World Health Organization's International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) model using core self-evaluations (CSE) to account for Personal Factors in persons with spinal cord injury (SCI). Method: One hundred eighty-seven adults with SCI were…

Purpose: To evaluate the factorial and concurrent validity and internal consistency reliability of the World Health Organization Disability Assessment Schedule 2.0 (WHODAS 2.0) 12-item version in persons with spinal cord injuries. Method: Two hundred forty-seven adults with spinal cord injuries completed an online survey consisting of the WHODAS…

With the rapid increase in the rate of children diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), there has been a surge in treatment interventions and outcome measures. Treatment interventions consist of evidence-based practices and programs that lack scientific validation. Parents' selection of a treatment or multiple treatments is often based on…

Positive psychology has received increasing attention in rehabilitation counseling research and practice. The rehabilitation counseling philosophy shares a similar emphasis of personal assets and strengths, which provides a solid foundation for the integration of positive psychology into the professional practice of rehabilitation counseling. In…

Sources of support and quality of life of 50 grandmother-headed families raising grandchildren with and without disabilities were examined. Comparative analyses revealed significant differences between grandmothers raising grandchildren with and without disabilities in regard to sources of support and family quality of life. Informal support was…

Quality of life (QOL) is the underlying goal of all rehabilitation interventions. Researchers and policy makers have proposed that QOL is an important and useful way to measure the impact of services. However, conceptual ambiguity, difficulty with operational definitions and measurement, and the inherent vulnerability to value bias have challenged…

Little scientific research has focused on the measure of how positive wellbeing of people caring for people with disabilities. The purposes of the present study are to explore the wellbeing perception and its determinants of caregivers who caring for people with disability. We employed a cross-sectional, self-administrative structured…

This study examined the relationship between self-determination and perceived quality of life for youth and young adults with chronic conditions and disabilities over time. A total of 34 individuals completed the "Life Satisfaction Index-Adolescents" and the "Arc's Self-Determination Scale" at study baseline and again 1 year…

This study assessed whether persons with spinal cord injuries who were successfully rehabilitated differed from those who were not with regard to positive and negative affect, life satisfaction, and depression. An ex post facto research design compared persons with spinal cord injuries who were previously employed with persons with spinal cord…

A review of the literature and a bibliography are provided on employment and the quality of adult life for individuals with disabilities. The literature review examines the concept of quality of life in general as well as quality of life assessments among populations with specific handicapping conditions. This is followed by a list of over 800…

A 12-item list of human abilities/activities was developed to measure quality of life of 9 rheumatoid arthritis adults from 2 aspects: "present condition" and "relative importance" of each item. Pilot testing indicated that importance and present condition represent different aspects. Differences between self-assessments and physicians'…

Students with disabilities face a variety of challenges that extend beyond the classroom, as they are often behind their peers in social and life skills. As they exit their secondary education programs they are often ill prepared to meet the multi-dimensional demands of the work place. According to the United States Department of Labor (2011),…

Interviews conducted with 30 disabled adults having varying degrees of orthopedic and spinal cord disabilities, deafness, and severe visual impairments revealed that 50 percent of the congenitally disabled would choose surgery guaranteed to completely cure the disability, and 50 percent opted for no surgery, fearing change in their satisfying…

People frequently mispredict the long-term emotional impact of circumstances. The authors examine 2 causes of such mispredictions--a focusing illusion and underappreciation of adaptation. In Experiment 1, the authors found, in 852 adults, that quality of life estimates (for living with disability) were not increased by reducing focusing illusions.…