Exploring the Design Space for an Abuse Self-Reporting Tool for People with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities
Nicole Jutras (Worcester Polytechnic Institute), Krishna Venkatasubramanian (University of Rhode Island), Jeanine Skorinko (Worcester Polytechnic Institute), Mariam Kobeissi (American University), Brittany Lewis (University of Rhode Island), Pauline Bosma (MASS), John Mullaly (MASS), Brian Kelly (MASS), Deborah Lloyd (MASS), Mariah Freark (DPPC), & Nancy Alterio (DPPC)
This is really a paramount study; I hope it gets the attention it deserves. How do we increase the support available to victims of abuse?
The research we have done has been going on for over 2 years now, and I do not see it stopping soon. I believe by developing a type of reporting tool, perhaps an application as discussed in the presentation, individuals with I/DD will be empowered to report abuse themselves. Giving this population a way to come forward and speak out about their experiences with abuse is something our research team strives to do.
Thank you for sharing your research and presenting at NEPA! Thank you for looking out for a vulnerable population.
This work wouldn’t be possible without our collaborators at Mass Advocates Standing Strong (MASS) and the Disabled Persons Protection Commission (DPPC). So, a big thank you to our wonderful and amazing collaborators!
The research team and I were happy to share our study! It is so important to give vulnerable populations the time and attention their issues deserve.
Sarah, this is such a good question. I think Nicole does a good job of talking about our next steps, but that is really a bigger question in this line of work. What can we do? What resources can we make available? How do we make these resources accessible? We hope the work we are doing is one possible way to increase to support, but it is only one step in a bigger process!
How do you think the fact that your practitioners were all female influenced the results? If there had been a gender split there would results potentially been different?
That is a very good question. We did not set out to receive only female practitioner responses even though it ended up that way. While we do not believe that the gender of the practitioner affected the observations we made in the presentation and paper we have on this research, we acknowledge completely that we could have missed potentially different perspective by only having female responses. This is a limitation we discuss further in the paper that accompanies this research.