Studying the Lives of Persons with Developmental Disabilities:
Methodological lessons from the Quality of Life Project
Dennis Raphael, Ivan Brown, Rebecca Renwick
January 1996, 13 pages
Information provided by consumers should influence the development and implementation of social service programs. Quality of Life information provided by consumers is especially important since the lives of persons with developmental disabilities are likely to be impacted by the structure and delivery of programs. Nevertheless, persons with developmental disabilities are infrequently consulted on these matters. To correct this, meaningful, reliable, and valid information from persons with developmental disabilities is required. However, the collection of credible data which can be used to improve the quality of lives of persons with developmental disabilities is fraught with difficulty. An ongoing project designed to assess quality of life among persons with developmental disabilities illustrates some of these problems and presents a new approach to studying the lives of persons with developmental disabilities.