Abstract

Background and Aim: Visual impairment affects people's quality of life. Since the effect of rehabilitation services is measured by improving in quality of life, this study was performed to evaluate the effect of rehabilitation services on quality of life in the blind.

Materials and Methods: 121 blind and low vision people who covered by Zahedan Welfare Organization were studied by census method in this descriptive analytical study. Data was collected using demographic questionnaire (including demographic information and rehabilitation services information in the people) and quality of life questionnaire for the blind. This questionnaire was translated to Persian by Tavakol et al wich its and validity and reliability was assessed with using content validity and test-re-test method, respectively (0.89

Results: T-test results showed the mean score of quality of life significantly higher in patients who had rehabilitation service than persons deprived of services (p=0.03). Mann-Whitney test showed these patients have significantly higher quality of life in mobility domain (p=0.01) and self-care (p<0.001).

Conclusion: According to the results, developing rehabilitation services and providing social programs for the blind is suggested.

Keywords: rehabilitation service, quality of life, blind people, low vision people

  Background and Aim: Cerebral palsy is an umbrella term used to describe disorders of motor function, emerge on early years of life , resulting from a brain injury or malfunction. These disorders may be accompanied by speech, auditory and visual disorders, seizure, learning disabilities , mental retardation and so on. Due to all these disorders, it seems that people with cerebral palsy have some special needs that understanding them are essential. As a result, it was done a study to understand the rehabilitation needs of people with cerebral palsy. One part of these requirements was social needs which are presented in this article separately because of its importance.

  Materials and Methods: This research was done as a qualitative type and with phenomenology method and sampling was purposeful. Participants were 17 cerebral palsy people (6 female and 11 male, with aged 15 to 43 years old). Data were collected by observation and deep interview with open-end questions and analyzed by Collaizi method.

  Results: S ocial needs domain of participants was appeared in 12 sub-themes and 7 themes. Themes were consisted of: to help and companionship with others, social acceptance , marriage, work, access to urban facilities , education and supportive organization.

  Conclusion: Social needs are an important and great part of cerebral palsy people's needs. So, it is necessary that organizations , institutes, families and all community members related to cerebral palsy people, consider this group's needs, especially their social needs and try to provide them .

  Key words: Cerebral palsy, Social needs, Qualitative study

Background and Aim: Shifting paradigms about how to assess the support needs of person with intellectual disability, in 1980, posed necessity of design and development of appropriate tools more than ever. In this regard, American Association on intellectual and developmental disabilities developed the supports Intensity scale to respond the lack of an appropriate tool. The aim of this study was to do the cultural adaptation and evaluation of psychometric properties of supports intensity scale in adult people with intellectual disability.

Materials and Methods: In this descriptive – analytic study, 43 adult persons with intellectual disability participated. Translation and adaptation of the SIS through International Quality of Life Assessment (IQOLA ) protocol was done. Validity of the test was evaluated by qualitative content validity. Internal consistency and test-retest reliability were used for evaluation of reliability.

Results: Based on the IQOLA protocol, The SIS had easy translation and relatively good quality. According to results, all items of the test had content validity. Cronbach's alpha coefficients fall in the range (.80-.99) and ICC ranged from .90 to .99

Conclusion: The results of this study showed that the Persian version of the SIS has good validity and reliability for identifying pattern and intensity of needed supports in adult people with intellectual disability.

Key words: Adaptation, Validity, Reliability, Intellectual disability, Supports Intensity Scale