ASSESSING CONSUMER PROFILES OF IDEAL ASSISTIVE TECHNOLOGIES IN 10 CATEGORIES - AN INTEGRATION OF QUANTITATIVE AND QUALITATIVE METHODS

This paper focuses on two trends in the field of disability and rehabi litation: (a) the desire to conserve resources and yet provide consume rs with the highest quality assistive technologies that they find pers onally appealing and useful and (b) the involvement of the consumers o f rehabilitation services in key decisions regarding the products and services they receive. The Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center on Technology Evaluation and Transfer (Buffalo, NY, USA) has endeavour ed to accomplish both by employing a mixed methods approach to consume r-identified needs and preferences regarding several categories of ass istive technology. The purpose of this paper is to describe the method s used in sufficient detail for replication by other researchers.