P. Bramston et G. Fogarty, The assessment of emotional distress experienced by people with an intellectual disability: a study of different methodologies, RES DEV DIS, 21(6), 2000, pp. 487-500
The assessment of emotional disorders such as anger, depression and stress
among people with an intellectual disability has traditionally used one of
three methodologies: ratings by a significant other, a clinical interview o
r self-report. Despite the widespread use of all three methodologies, there
is little research into their equivalence. This paper assesses the converg
ence among these three approaches for 147 people with a mild or moderate in
tellectual disability across the affective domains of anger, depression and
stress. The results showed the overlap among the three methods to be consi
stently low, although limited convergence was found between self-report and
clinical interview. Ratings by work supervisors discriminated least clearl
y between anger, depression and stress while self-report was the most discr
iminating between these three overlapping but conceptually distinct states.
Suggestions are made for ongoing research into the methodologies of assess
ing affective states among people with an intellectual disability. (C) 2000
Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.