The Role of Vocational Rehabilitation Programs in Improving the Quality of Life for Individuals with Intellectual Disabilities

الملخص

The study aimed to investigate the impact of implementing a proposed vocational rehabilitation training program on improving the quality of life of individuals with intellectual disabilities. The study targeted 21 female students enrolled in the intellectual integration program in Al-Dakhiliyah Governorate, Sultanate of Oman, drawn from seven schools implementing the intellectual integration program. The present study is a quasi-experimental study that adopted the experimental method by implementing a vocational rehabilitation training program with an experimental group of female students with intellectual disabilities. The researchers developed a quality-of-life scale consisting of 55 items distributed across four dimensions: health-related quality of life, psychological quality of life, social and family quality of life, and vocational quality of life and practical skills. The scale was administered to the study participants after its validity had been established. The findings revealed statistically significant differences across all sub-dimensions of the scale, in favor of the post-test measurement. The training program demonstrated a strong impact on all dimensions of the quality-of-life-scale for female students with intellectual disabilities, as well as on the overall scale, with the Eta squared coefficient (η²) ranging from 0.70 to 0.91. Furthermore, no statistically significant differences were found between the post-test and follow-up measurements, confirming the sustained effect of the program on the study sample. The study recommends placing greater emphasis on implementing similar vocational training programs, providing financial support for individuals with intellectual disabilities, and incorporating vocational and professional activities into the curriculum.

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