Resumen

BOLUARTE CARBAJAL, Alicia. Associated factors of quality of life in people with intellectual disability. Interdisciplinaria [online]. 2019, vol.36, n.1, pp.187-202. ISSN 1668-7027.

Quality of life is a central aspect of the new conceptualization of intellectual disability. Contrary to prior beliefs, intellectual disability is currently considered the sum of practical, social and conceptual abilities; that is, intelligence as measured by standardized IQ tests is no longer considered the only and most fundamental aspect of this phenomenon. In line with this idea, environmental variables have regained interest as an important feature which researchers should attempt to understand. Thus, it is important to examine which sociodemographic factors are more associated with quality of life in people with intellectual disability. Since such variable simply an important cultural component, it is important that these studies be done in different cultural contexts. However, there is a paucity of research on the topic in Latin America and, specifically, in Peru. The objective of this study was to identify factors associated with quality of life in people with intellectual disability from three public institutions of Lima-Peru. The study sample was composed by 115 participants with intellectual disability aged between 15 and 45 years; 39 (37%) were women and 66 (62.9%) were men; 13.3% had non-poor socioeconomic status, 63.8% had a poor status and 22.9% had extreme poor status according to the report of the institutions of origin. The measure used was the Integral Scale of Quality of Life (Verdugo, Arias & Gómez, 2009). This measure is composed of two scales: The Objective scale (filled out by the caregiver), and the Subjective scale (filled out by people with intellectual disabilities themselves). In order to establish the association between sociodemographic variables (age, sex, socioeconomic status, and type of family), correlational analyses were performed using bivariate and regression techniques. The correlation between the Objective and Subjective scales of quality of life was low (r = .252). In the bivariate analysis of the Objective scale, an association was observed between this scale and the variables gender, paid work and socioeconomic status. When these variables were analyzed using multiple regression techniques, both paid work and socioeconomic status were the best predictors of quality of life as measured by the Objective scale. On the other hand, the only significant predictor of the Subjective scale was poverty condition. These results indicate that quality of life of people with intellectual disabilities is affected by different sociodemographic variables, and poverty seems to be the most important. It is also worth highlighting the fact that sex was an important variable associated with quality of life. Consequently, it is recommendable to develop studies of disability with a special emphasis on gender. In addition, it is important to notice that quality of life reported by people with intellectual disability shows only a low association with their caregiver's reports. Therefore, both points of view -those of people with disabilities and of their caregivers- are needed to obtain comprehensive results. Moreover, sociodemographic factors shared an important amount of variance with objective quality of life (i.e. that reported by the caregiver) but not with subjective quality of life (i.e. that reported by the person with intellectual disability). These findings stress the importance of taking the opinions of people with intellectual disability into consideration, and of identifying other associated factors that constitute better predictors of subjective quality of life.

Palabras clave : Quality of life; Intellectual disability; Poverty; Objective quality of life; Subjective quality of life.

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