Trust and quality of life: A study in organizations for individuals with intellectual disability.
Supervisor trust in staff circles back as staff trust and shows up in better client quality-of-life services.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Jalili et al. (2024) asked staff and families in intellectual-disability services about trust.
They used a survey to see if supervisor trust in the team made staff trust back.
They also checked if that trust link led to better quality-of-life services for clients.
What they found
When supervisors showed trust, staff returned the trust.
That two-way trust matched higher family ratings of client quality-of-life services.
The study found positive results, but no numbers were reported.
How this fits with other research
Maniezki et al. (2021) found the same positive link using justice instead of trust.
Both papers show that fair or trusting staff-family ties lift service quality.
Green et al. (2020) saw mixed results: poor climate raised challenging behavior.
Sedigheh et al. flip the lens: good climate (trust) lifts good outcomes (QoL).
Cruz et al. (2023) trained supervisors with BST and improved therapist DTT.
Sedigheh et al. show trust training can also cascade to better team care.
Why it matters
You can build trust today. Start staff meetings with public praise for direct-care staff.
Share small wins like 'Mom called to thank you for Joe’s new sign.'
These trust signals cost nothing yet may lift client quality of life faster than new forms.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
BACKGROUND: Based on social exchange within organizations for individuals with intellectual disability, we explore trust between supervisors and team members and its association with organizational performance oriented to the quality of life of service users. AIMS: We examine the mediating role of teams' trust in supervisors in the relationship between supervisors' trust in teams and performance focused on improving the quality of life of service users. We expect teams to reciprocate supervisors' trust by reporting greater levels of trust in supervisors and better performance. METHOD AND PROCEDURES: We tested this trust-mediated model with a sample of 139 supervisors (reporting trust in their teams), 1101 team members (reporting trust in their supervisors), and 1468 family members (reporting performance focused on quality of life). OUTCOMES AND RESULTS: Our findings confirmed a cross-level mediation process. Supervisors' trust in their teams leads to teams' trust in their supervisors. This trust at the team level in turn is positively associated with organizational performance oriented to improving the quality of life of individuals with intellectual disability, reported by family members. CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS: Our study builds on and extends an established stream of research on trust theory by considering trust and its association with performance focused on quality of life.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2024 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2024.104782