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Using Quantitative Research to Inform Mental Health Services for People With Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Who Have Experienced Sexual Abuse
Circa 1993 in my clinical work with people with intellectual disabilities (formerly referred to as people with mental retardation), my colleagues and I encountered a research gap that significantly impacted our ability to deliver optimal mental health services to the individuals seeking care in the specialized outpatient clinic where we worked. Although the literature told us that people with intellectual disabilities were considerably more vulnerable to experiences of sexual abuse, very little had been written about how such traumatic life experiences impact and manifest in people with intellectual disabilities. Moreover, not a single empirical study on the topic could be located. Discovering this research gap was disheartening as a clinician and clinical supervisor, but paradoxically proved illuminating for me as a doctoral student. It fueled a passion to fill the information void necessary to inform our clinical practice and subsequently became the focus of my dissertation study. This case study offers an overview of the quantitative research design used to examine mental health implications of sexual abuse within a clinical population of adults with intellectual disabilities. It provides an inside look at the value of including the voice of individuals with intellectual disabilities in research studies, the challenges of securing an adequately sized sample, the issues of consent when conducting research with protected populations, and finally, thinking outside the box to create a means by which to share the studys findings with research participants in a manner that made the information accessible to them.