The impact of individual and organisational factors on engagement of individuals with intellectual disability living in community group homes: a multilevel model.
Sharpening direct-support staff skill and targeting adaptive-skill goals are fast levers to raise resident engagement in group homes.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team looked at the adults with intellectual disability in the group homes.
They asked: who gets more social and non-social engagement?
They measured each person’s adaptive skills, challenging behavior, and staff skill.
Then they used a multilevel model to see which factors predicted engagement.
What they found
People with stronger daily-living skills joined more social activities.
Lower challenging behavior and higher staff competence boosted non-social engagement.
Still, 24 % of the difference lived at the home level, not the person level.
In short, better staff plus stronger skills equals more active residents.
How this fits with other research
Pilowsky et al. (1998) already showed smaller, stimulating homes beat nursing homes on adaptive behavior.
Qian et al. (2015) now adds: even inside good group homes, staff skill still pushes engagement higher.
Michael (1995) found more staff per resident helped; this paper says competent staff matter more than raw numbers.
Together the line of studies moves the field from “where to live” to “how to support once there.”
Why it matters
You can’t change a client’s IQ in a day, but you can grow staff skill right now.
Schedule brief daily coaching on prompting play, chores, and conversation.
Track each resident’s adaptive goals and challenging behavior; pair high-skill staff with those who need the most help.
These small shifts can unlock the 24 % house-level variance and lift engagement this month.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
BACKGROUND: Being engaged in daily activities is a strong indicator of quality of life for individuals with intellectual disability (ID) who live in small community group homes. This study aimed to identify individual and organisational factors that predict high levels of engagement. METHOD: Individuals with ID (n = 78), direct support professionals (DSPs; n = 174) and supervisors (n = 21) from 21 US group homes participated in the study. For each individual with ID, we conducted 80 min of observation at the person's residence. Information was also gathered regarding demographic characteristics, DSP competence, supervisor years of experience and management practices. Data were analysed using multilevel modelling. RESULTS: On average, individuals were engaged in social activities 12% of observed time and non-social activities 35% of the time. Individuals with greater adaptive skills who were supported by more competent staff showed significantly higher levels of social engagement. Individuals with less severe deficits in adaptive behaviours and less challenging behaviour showed higher levels of non-social engagement. Although none of the factors related to group homes were significant, 24% of the variance in non-social engagement existed among group homes. CONCLUSION: These results suggested that engagement is a dynamic construct. The extent to which an individual with ID is engaged in daily life is a result of interplay between the individual's characteristics and the group home environment. Future research is needed to investigate the influence of variables specific to the group home on the engagement level of individuals with disabilities.
Journal of intellectual disability research : JIDR, 2015 · doi:10.1111/jir.12152