What makes them feel like they do? Investigating the subjective well-being in people with severe and profound disabilities.
BACKGROUND
Because of the problems measuring subjective well-being in people with severe and profound intellectual disabilities, there are no studies to date which explore the factors contributing to the subjective well-being in these groups. We wanted to explore the client and service characteristics contributing to the subjective well-being of persons with severe and profound intellectual disabilities, as measured by the MIPQ (Ross & Oliver, 2003).


METHODS
The MIPQ was completed for 360 persons with severe or profound intellectual disabilities by a member of the direct support staff. They also provided us with information on client, service and informant characteristics.


RESULTS
We found that the subjective well-being of persons with profound intellectual disabilities was lower than the subjective well-being of people with mild, moderate or severe intellectual disabilities or people without disabilities. Client and informant characteristics but no service characteristics were found to have an influence on the subjective well-being of people with severe and profound intellectual disabilities.


CONCLUSIONS
As it is important for policy making to identify residence service and staff factors related to subjective well-being of persons with severe and profound intellectual disabilities, further research should try to identify these factors, taking in account the client characteristics that are found to be related to subjective well-being in this study.
Vos
Pieter
P
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Centre for Parenting, Child Welfare and Disability, Vesaliusstraat 2, P.O. Box 3765, B-3000 Leuven, Belgium. pieter.vos@ped.kuleuven.be
De Cock
Paul
P
Petry
Katja
K
Van Den Noortgate
Wim
W
Maes
Bea
B
D000328:Adult; D000339:Affect; D001530:Belgium; D005260:Female; D006240:Happiness; D006801:Humans; D008607:Intellectual Disability / Q000523:psychology*; D007360:Intelligence; D008297:Male; D009341:Negativism; D012112:Residential Facilities; D012649:Self Concept; D012720:Severity of Illness Index; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires