Chilean adults with intellectual disabilities: Beliefs, attitudes and parental perceptions about their self-determination

Abstract

The development of self-determination skills in people with intellectual disabilities should be promoted from natural contexts and not only from formal environments. To know the extent to which families can facilitate or hinder self-determination, the beliefs, perceptions and attitudes about self-determination of 282 parents of adults with intellectual disabilities in Chile have been analyzed from a non-experimental quantitative paradigm. The main results show how attitudes and beliefs in favor of self-determination increase the performance of these skills among children. Likewise, it is adults with severe disabilities who receive, by parents, fewer opportunities to develop their self-determination. The discussion of these findings allows to infer certain tendencies of action among the children from the beliefs and attitudes of the parents. This helps to identify training needs in families and to guide future interventions on this construct from the family context.