Background: Direct support professionals' (DSPs') attitudes toward nutrition are important for supporting a healthy lifestyle of persons with intellectual disabilities. However, there are no instruments to measure it. The aim of this study was to compose a questionnaire and determine its internal validity. Method: The previously validated Health…

Background: Placement behaviours of families of adults with intellectual disabilities has received little or no attention of researches to date. Methods: A prospective design was adopted to examine changes in placement decisions of 75 family carers over a 12-month period. Factors associated with changes were also examined. Results: Over 12 months,…

Background: The purpose of the present research was to analyse the impact of an educational message incorporating descriptive, explanatory, and directive information on the attitudes of young adults toward a peer with high-functioning autism (HFA). Method: Engineering students (N = 104) completed the Multidimensional Attitudes Scale at 3 time…

Background: Children with Down syndrome (DS) are at risk for autism spectrum disorder (ASD). They are often diagnosed later than other children in part due to difficulty differentiating ASD-related impairment from that associated with DS. The psychometric properties of the Pervasive Developmental Disorder in Mental Retardation Scale (PDD-MRS) were…

Background: This study investigates whether parents, professionals, and university students have different sexual attitudes towards men versus women with intellectual disability (ID) and which factors are related to such attitudes among these three groups. Method: A self-administered survey using the ASQ-ID questionnaire was implemented, and 130…

Background: Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is characterised by altered social patterns, often associated with increased stress. While puberty is associated with increased stress, there is limited research on stress response to social interaction in adolescents with ASD. The study investigated stress response to semi-structured, videogame-based…

Background: Understanding adaptive behaviour variability in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) may have important implications for early intervention. The purpose of this study was to explore whether autism symptom severity and caregiver depression affected adaptive behaviour in young children with ASD. Method: Data were collected from…

Background: Although there has been interest in the influence of cognitions on the relationship between challenging behaviour and maternal wellbeing, there is an absence of measures to specifically examine parents' perceptions of challenging behaviour. The psychometric properties of the Challenging Behaviour Perception Questionnaire (CBPQ;…

Background: Inadequate physical activity is a problem for people with Down syndrome and objective monitoring using accelerometers may be inaccurate in this population. Method: This was a cross-validation and reliability study comparing two triaxial accelerometers (the SenseWear and RT3) to a criterion measure (the OxyCon Mobile) in 10 young people…

Background: Both parent-report and clinician-administered autism spectrum disorder (ASD) screening instruments are important to accurately inform ASD risk ascertainment. The aim of this study was to adapt a clinician-administered ASD screening instrument, the Autistic Behavioural Indicators Instrument (ABII), as a parent questionnaire equivalent…

Background: We investigated the experience of siblings of children with CHARGE syndrome (n = 29). Siblings of children with a disability are an understudied population, and, to our knowledge, this is the first investigation of the sibling relationship in CHARGE. Method: Participants were asked to complete 5 measures: (a) Sibling Evaluation…

Conventionally, transition outcomes for youth with disability have focused rather narrowly on employment and employment-related outcomes. In this paper we propose a more holistic and comprehensive evaluation of transition outcomes through the lens of quality of life. First, 3 quality of life frameworks that have been applied empirically in…

Background: Raising children with borderline to mild intellectual disability (BMID) and psychosocial problems may yield a strong need for support among parents, but evidence for this is lacking. The aim of this study was to investigate the prevalence of need for parenting support in this population, and the child and parent characteristics that…

Background: It is important that screening tools for intellectual disability are validated against the diagnostic criteria relating to intellectual and adaptive functioning, as well as childhood onset, but researchers often focus only on intellectual functioning. This brief report aimed to explore the convergent validity of the Child and…

Background: There is a long history of research on parents of children with disabilities, but to the authors' knowledge, no study has compared the stress of parents of children with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD) to parents of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Method: Twenty-five parents of children with ASD and 25 parents of…