Evaluating a health behaviour model for persons with and without an intellectual disability.
A new health-behaviour survey battery gives BCBAs one valid ruler for adults with and without ID.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team built a new health-behaviour model for adults with and without intellectual disability.
They wrote survey questions, gave them to both groups, and ran confirmatory factor analysis.
The goal was to see if the same model and tools work for both populations.
What they found
The surveys were reliable and the model fit both groups well.
Adults with ID could answer the same health-behaviour questions as everyone else.
How this fits with other research
Hermans et al. (2011) and Wouters et al. (2017) show that good ID tools are rare. Their reviews found only a few fitness or anxiety measures with solid data.
Chiu et al. (2017) and Wang et al. (2010) also used confirmatory factor analysis to shorten and validate ID scales. Like Danitz et al. (2014), they proved one clean total score can sum up many items.
Koegel et al. (1992) once failed to support a social-intelligence model in ID teens. Danitz et al. (2014) succeeded with health behaviour, showing that careful item writing and CFA—not the method—was the key difference.
Why it matters
You now have a ready-made survey set that equates adults with and without ID on the same health-behaviour ruler. Use it to spot gaps, track program impact, or build self-management goals without switching tools.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
BACKGROUND: Based on the idea of the Common Sense Model of Illness Representations by Leventhal as well as Lohaus's concepts of health and illness, a health behaviour model was designed to explain health behaviours applied by persons with intellectual disabilities (ID). The key proposal of this model is that the way someone understands the concepts of health, illness and disability influences the way they perceive themselves and what behavioural approaches to them they take. METHOD: To test this model and explain health differences between the general population and person with ID, 230 people with ID and a comparative sample of 533 persons without ID were included in this Austrian study. Data were collected on general socio-demographics, personal perceptions of illness and disability, perceptions of oneself and health-related behaviours. RESULTS: Psychometric analysis of the instruments used showed that they were valid and reliable and hence can provide a valuable tool for studying health-related issues in persons with and without ID. With respect to the testing of the suggested health model, two latent variables were defined in accordance to the theory. The general model fit was evaluated by calculating different absolute and descriptive fit indices. Most indices indicated an acceptable model fit for all samples. CONCLUSIONS: This study presents the first attempt to explore the systematic differences in health behaviour between people with and without ID based on a suggested health model. Limitations of the study as well as implications for practice and future research are discussed.
Journal of intellectual disability research : JIDR, 2014 · doi:10.1111/jir.12046