Abstract
Support needs represent the intensity of support required by a person with a disability in order to take part in the activities related to normative human functioning. The Supports Intensity Scale for Children (SIS-C) is possibly the most promising tool for assessing and designing individualized support programs in children with intellectual disability. The SIS-C measures support needs across 61 activities, each one assessed along three methods: type of support, frequency, and daily time during which support is to be given. We investigated the impact of method effects in the SIS-C through a bifactor approach to the analysis of multitrait-multimethod matrices. The results suggest that neither intensity nor frequency scales produced method effects that significantly distorted the measurement of support needs. However, the daily support time method had substantial undesirable effects on five of the seven subscales of support needs. Considerations about support needs assessment and future modifications of the scale are discussed.
Highlights
Conceiving intellectual disability (ID) as a state of human functioning rather than as an intrinsic trait has important consequences on our understanding of the role played by the environment in determining the outcomes achieved by persons with ID. Schalock et al (2010) argued that needs that arise from the gap between the individual and the environment should be approached through individualized support
(please insert figure 1 approximately here). Considering these models, we investigated the internal structure of the Supports Intensity Scale for Children (SIS-C) in two steps: first by (1) comparing the fit between pairs of nested models (M1 vs. Model 2 (M2), and model 1 (M1) vs. model 3 (M3)), and secondly (2) by evaluating the parameters obtained from M1, with special attention on the distribution and size of the factorial loadings and the total variance explained by each of the factors
The correlations between methods in M1 were non-significant except between daily time and intensity (r = .23; p
Summary
Conceiving intellectual disability (ID) as a state of human functioning rather than as an intrinsic trait has important consequences on our understanding of the role played by the environment in determining the outcomes achieved by persons with ID. Schalock et al (2010) argued that needs that arise from the gap between the individual and the environment should be approached through individualized support. It is understood that individuals with ID have the same needs as individuals without ID, and that they may reveal other special needs and require specific support (in terms of type, frequency, and daily support time) for the purpose of identifying, expressing, and meeting those needs (Thompson & Viriyangkura, 2013). From this perspective, the possible differences between individuals with and without ID would mainly depend on the intensity of the support to be provided by the society in order to guarantee their complete participation in social activities and interactions
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