Enhancing staff attitudes, knowledge and skills in supporting the self-determination of adults with intellectual disability in residential settings in Hong Kong: a pretest-posttest comparison group design.
A short BST course lifts residential staff attitudes and skills for supporting adult self-determination.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Researchers in Hong Kong built a six-session staff training package.
It used behavioral skills training: explain, show, practice, feedback.
Residential staff learned how to support self-determination in adults with intellectual disability.
A small group got the training. A similar group did not.
What they found
Staff who took the six sessions scored higher on attitude, knowledge, and facilitation skills.
The no-training group stayed the same.
The study showed BST can lift staff performance in one month.
How this fits with other research
Gormley et al. (2019) later ran a stronger RCT with 104 staff and found the same gains.
That paper supersedes this one: it proves the effect with random groups and bigger numbers.
Rapport et al. (1996) did the opposite: they taught adults with ID to pick their own homes.
Together the studies show you can train either side—staff or clients—to grow self-determination.
Matson et al. (2009) swapped outside trainers for peer staff and still got good results, a handy replication.
Why it matters
You now have a ready-made six-session script.
Run it as-is or split it into shorter huddles.
Track attitude with a quick survey and skill with role-play tests.
If you need stronger proof later, copy Gormley et al. (2019) and add random assignment.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
BACKGROUND: The ecological perspective recognizes the critical role that is played by rehabilitation personnel in helping people with intellectual disability (ID) to exercise self-determination, particularly in residential settings. In Hong Kong, the authors developed the first staff training programme of its kind to strengthen the competence of personnel in this area. The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of staff training in enhancing residential staff's attitudes, knowledge and facilitation skills in assisting residents with ID to exercise self-determination. METHODS: A pretest-posttest comparison group design was adopted. Thirty-two participants in an experimental group attended a six-session staff training programme. A 34-item self-constructed scale was designed and used for measuring the effectiveness of the staff training. RESULTS: The results showed that the experimental group achieved statistically significant positive changes in all domains, whereas no significant changes were found in the comparison group. CONCLUSIONS: The findings provided initial evidence of the effectiveness of staff training that uses an interactional attitude-knowledge-skills model for Chinese rehabilitation personnel. The factors that contributed to its effectiveness were discussed and recommendations for future research were made.
Journal of intellectual disability research : JIDR, 2008 · doi:10.1111/j.1365-2788.2007.01014.x