title: How staff pursue questions to adults with intellectual disabilities.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  When support staff use questions to instruct, advise or guide adults with intellectual disabilities (ID), or to solicit information from them, the interaction does not always proceed smoothly, particularly when replies are ambiguous, absent or not obviously relevant. That can lead to interactional trouble and dissatisfaction, or worse.
  
  
  METHODS
  We report on the ways in which staff members transform their questions over a series of conversational turns in order to solicit an adequate reply, and thereby to fulfil the interactional goal of the question. Our data come from approximately 30 h of recordings of natural conversation between staff members and adults with ID in two residential and one outdoor activities settings.
  
  
  RESULTS
  We identify seven practices by which staff attempt to resolve the dilemma between undue direction and premature closure. These include: expansion of the original question, simplifying its format, changing its content in various ways and realising its alternatives in physical form.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  We highlight strategies which produce answers satisfactory to both parties, and improve the quality of interaction between staff and people with ID.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, UK. mick.finlay@anglia.ac.uk
authors.forename: W M L
authors.initials: WM
authors.lastname: Finlay
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Antaki
mesh_terms: D000203:Activities of Daily Living / Q000523:psychology; D000328:Adult; D001521:Behavior Therapy; D003144:Communication Barriers; D005260:Female; D016352:Group Homes; D006801:Humans; D008607:Intellectual Disability / Q000523:psychology*; D007805:Language Development Disorders / Q000523:psychology*; D008297:Male; D009633:Nonverbal Communication; D011369:Professional-Patient Relations; D012114:Residential Treatment; D012660:Semantics; D013065:Speech Intelligibility; D014705:Verbal Behavior; D014743:Videotape Recording