www.ejhs.org
An Evaluation of a Community-Based
Sexuality Education Program for Individuals with Developmental Disabilities
Results
Self-Disclosure of Sexual Victimization and Perpetration
Approximately 28% of the consumers have disclosed past sexual victimization during the program, while approximately 13% disclosed past perpetration. Currently, four reports have been made to Adult Protective Services since the perpetration or victimization was still imminent.
Support Persons' Knowledge Changes
A repeated measures ANOVA was conducted to assess support persons' knowledge of sexuality and disabilities at pre-test and post-test. The support persons answered a significantly greater number of the items correct at post-test than pre-test (F (1, 211) = 573.32; p < .001). More specifically, they answered 60% of the 20 true/false items correctly at pre-test, and 88% of the items correctly at post-test.
Next, repeated measures ANOVAs were conducted on the individual items on the support persons' knowledge pre-test and post-test. As can be seen in Table 2, significant increases in the number of correct answers from pre-test to post-test were found on 17 of the 20 items. Most of these items were significant at p < .001.
One item (i.e., "The more disabled a person is the lower his/her sex drive") was answered incorrectly significantly more at post-test. The only two items that did not show a significant change follow: (1) "People with developmental disabilities do not desire as much physical touch as does a non-disabled person," and (2) "Generally, victims of sexual abuse are abused by people that they know."
Changes in Observed Consumer Sexual Expressions
The support person was asked to rate how often they had observed the consumer engaging in the sexual expression behaviors (i.e., 0 = never, 1 = once, 2 = a few times, or 3 = frequently) in the 2 months before the program. The sexual expressions that were observed by more than 10% of the support persons in the 2 months before the program follow: (a) 63.5% reported that their consumers had invaded other's private space; (b) 35.9% reported that their consumers had kissed and/or hugged other people who were not family, friends, or significant others; (c) 24.1% reported that their consumers touched his/her private parts in public; (d) 22.1% reported that their consumers had talked about sexual acts in a public setting; (e) 12.9% reported that their consumers had watched people when they were nude or undressing; (f) 12.5% reported that their consumers reported that their consumers rubbed his/her body against others without consent; (g) 10.8% reported that their consumers touched another adult's private body parts in public; and (h) 10.8% reported that their consumers touched another adult's private body parts without permission. However, over 90% of the consumers were not observed engaging in the other inappropriate sexual expression behaviors on the scale (see Table 3).
The support persons were asked to complete the inappropriate sexual expression scale again 6-8 weeks after the program. The most frequently cited behaviors observed by more than 10% of the support persons at post-test follow: (a) 47.5% reported that their consumers had invaded other's private space; (b) 32.1% reported that their consumers had kissed and/or hugged other people who were not family, friends, or significant others; and (c) 11.7% reported that their consumers had talked about sexual acts in a public setting and/or touched his/her private parts in public.
Next, repeated measures ANOVAs were conducted which compared the frequency of engaging in the behaviors before the program and after the program. The results of the repeated measures ANOVAs are in Table 4. All of the behaviors, except one, decreased from pre-test to post-test. The item about having sex with an animal was not observed by any of the support persons at pre-test or post-test. The level of inappropriate sexual expression was significantly lower at post-test for 14 of the 36 behaviors.
Consumers' Knowledge of Sexuality
Repeated measures ANOVAs were conducted to assess consumers' knowledge of sexuality at pre-test and post-test. The consumers answered a significantly greater number of the items correctly at the post-test (F (1,178) = 1059.17; p < .001). Specifically, the consumers answered 46% of the 125 response items correctly at pre-test, and 78% of the items correctly at post-test.
Next, the items were collapsed into the nine content domains as shown in Table 5, As can be seen in this table, the consumers answered a significantly greater number of the items at post-test than they did at pre-test in each domain.
Support Persons' and Consumers' Satisfaction with the Responsible Choices Program
Both the support persons and consumers were asked to complete a satisfaction survey after the consumers completed the program. The support person satisfaction subscale had six items while the consumer satisfaction subscale had six items. The response choices on the items ranged from low satisfaction (1) to high satisfaction (5). Of the 154 support persons who completed the survey, the mean satisfaction score was 4.70. The mean satisfaction rating for the 173 consumers who completed the survey was 4.63.