The Need for Norming Instruments That Measure Inclusion Activities Among People Who Have Intellectual Disability

Abstract

More attention has been brought towards efforts to better integrate people with Intellectual Disability (ID) with the rest of society. Part of this integration is understanding the similarities and differences in the number of interactions that people with Intellectual Disability and the normative population have in various scenarios. In the absence of normed scales measuring inclusion, community participation data collected from 2005 people with Intellectual Disability were compared with data from a variety of samples of members of the general public. Studies suggest a means by which inclusion data might be interpreted. Preliminary results suggested that people with Intellectual Disability participated in social community events slightly more than the general public but slightly less in life support events such as grocery shopping. This study provides insight into how people with Intellectual Disability interact in different community settings, but also a greater need for more public data on average interaction data from the general population as a whole.