Examining the Predictors of Life Satisfaction in College Students With Intellectual Disability.
Campus belonging, not just mental-health fixes, lifts life satisfaction for college students with ID.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Van Gaasbeek et al. (2026) asked 129 college students with intellectual disability to fill out a survey.
The survey measured how much they felt they belonged on campus, their mental-health symptoms, and their life satisfaction.
The team then used statistics to see which factors still predicted life satisfaction after age, gender, and mental health were already counted.
What they found
Belongingness explained an extra 12.5% of the differences in life satisfaction.
Even after mental-health symptoms were held constant, feeling part of campus life still mattered.
In short, fitting in, not just feeling less anxious or depressed, drives happiness for these students.
How this fits with other research
Wang et al. (2010) showed that quality of life in adults with ID is one big umbrella made of eight smaller parts.
Van Gaasbeek et al. (2026) now zooms in on one of those parts—life satisfaction—and shows belonging is a key lever inside that umbrella.
Scior et al. (2023) found that neighborhood quality changes how life factors relate to sedentary behavior in adults with ID.
Likewise, the 2026 study hints that campus climate could be the neighborhood for students, shaping how belonging translates to satisfaction.
Why it matters
You can’t fix life satisfaction with only anxiety or depression tools.
Create clubs, peer mentors, and inclusive events so students with ID feel they belong.
One more pizza night or study-buddy match could raise satisfaction more than another social-skills group focused on symptoms.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
BACKGROUND: Young adults with intellectual disability (ID) are increasingly attending college through inclusive post-secondary education (IPSE) programmes. However, little is known about their psychological experiences at college. The current study aimed to examine the role of belongingness, anxiety and depressive symptoms in predicting life satisfaction for college students with ID enrolled in IPSE programmes at 4-year American colleges and universities. METHOD: College students with ID (n = 129) from 21 IPSE programmes across the United States completed an online survey reporting on mental health symptoms, belongingness and life satisfaction. Programme staff (n = 21) from each of the IPSE programmes also completed an online survey providing information about their programmes. RESULTS: Results of the study indicated that there were significant differences in life satisfaction and level of anxiety based on gender, residential status and access to mental health services. A hierarchical regression analysis revealed that belongingness was significantly associated with life satisfaction and accounted for 12.5% additional variance in life satisfaction, above and beyond the variance accounted for by race, ethnicity, residential status and mental health symptoms. CONCLUSION: This study provides information on the well-being of college students with ID attending IPSE programmes, indicating high rates of mental health symptoms along with the role played by their sense of belonging in relation to their reported life satisfaction.
Journal of intellectual disability research : JIDR, 2026 · doi:10.1111/jir.70090