Project Description:
This project builds on a NIDRR-funded initiative focused on the development and analysis of the National Core Indicators (NCI) Program that ended in 2011. The National Core Indicators (NCI) Program is the most widely used program of outcomes for persons with intellectual and disabilities (IDD) in the US addressing their community inclusion, employment and other services, health and wellbeing, and choice/rights. Currently, 39 states participate in at least bi-annual NCI-based outcome research on a minimum of 400 randomly selected individuals with (IDD) receiving publicly-financed services. The project team will analyze a combined data set including at least 13,000 people interviewed for the NCI survey in 2013 and subsequent years. Participating states receive validated, psychometrically tested instrumentation, technical assistance with random selection procedures, standardized training of interviewers, and a centralized system of data quality review, coding and analysis.
The University of Minnesota will collaborate with the National Association of State Directors of Developmental Disabilities Services, the Human Services Research Institute and the University of Sydney to extend its work using NCI data to describe and analyze outcomes for people with IDD. The project team is proficient in managing and analyzing the large NCI data sets and published numerous peer reviewed articles and reports to inform academic, practitioner as well as policy-making audiences about daily life choices, community inclusion, health and other characteristics of individuals with IDD. Based on eight years of collaborative work with the NCI data sets the team proposes to further their work by doing the following:
1. Having identified predictors that consistently account for a large amount of variance for key individual outcomes, sophisticated research design and analytical approaches including multivariate analysis will be utilized to examine patterns of factors across outcomes;
2. Having learned that certain variables are related to clusters of individuals (e.g., state of residence, state policies) we will use a hierarchical analytic approach to separate out and better account for state level variability,
3. Having addressed topic areas such as daily life choices and loneliness, with sufficient rigor, we will focus on other areas important to the lives of individuals with IDD specifically related to community inclusion, employment, health, and rights;
4. Having done cross-sectional analyses of the data we will explore trends over time using annual data from participating states;
5. Building on the multitude of products that have already been published or presented using the NCI data set, we propose a concerted dissemination and translation effort that will lead to materials, practices and policies clearly rooted in state-of-the art analytic work and dissemination technology and formats that is accessible to persons with disabilities and their caregivers.
6. Having identified policies and practices that support full inclusion and integration for individuals with IDD, we will compare outcomes for individuals with IDD to outcomes for specific subgroups as well as to the general population.
The overarching goal is to use the NCI data sets with the acquired expertise of the project team to advance disability and rehabilitation research and disseminate and translate results into materials, practices and policies that will increase inclusion and integration for people with IDD and improve the effectiveness of supports and services for this population. Results will be published in peer-reviewed journals, disseminated via presentations, Policy Research Briefs and IMPACT, and will be translated for self-advocates on the Self-Advocacy.org and Quality Mall website.
