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Interviewing mentally retarded persons: issues and strategies
Monograph of the American Association of Mental Deficiency
|January 1, 1981
Summary
Individuals with intellectual disabilities can share detailed experiences of community reintegration. Training interviewers in patience and clear questioning facilitates eliciting these valuable personal accounts.
Area of Science:
- Social Sciences
- Psychology
- Disability Studies
Background:
- Community reintegration for individuals with intellectual disabilities presents unique challenges.
- Understanding the lived experiences of this population is crucial for effective support.
Purpose of the Study:
- To explore the capacity of individuals with intellectual disabilities to articulate their experiences with community reintegration.
- To identify effective interviewing techniques for eliciting detailed personal accounts.
Main Methods:
- Qualitative interviews with individuals with intellectual disabilities.
- Training program for interviewers focusing on patience, rapport-building, and question design.
- Role-playing exercises to refine interviewing skills.
Main Results:
- Mentally retarded individuals are willing and able to provide complex narratives of their community reintegration.
- Interviewers can be trained to create a supportive atmosphere, reducing pressure and encouraging open responses.
- Key interviewing elements include patience, well-constructed, non-ambiguous questions, and avoiding forced categories.
Conclusions:
- Individuals with intellectual disabilities possess rich experiential knowledge about community life.
- Effective interviewer training is vital for accessing these insights.
- This research offers a model for gathering in-depth qualitative data from this population.