Coping Skills of Intellectually Disabled Young Adults: An Exploratory Investigation

ABSTRACTThe coping actions of a group of young people with an intellectual disability were investigated using an adapted version of The Adolescent Coping Scale (ACS; Frydenberg & Lewis, 1993a). Generally, the coping of this population has been addressed by focusing on adaptive behaviours that, generally, have been determined on the basis of reports by significant others rather than by self-report instruments. The lack of suitable instruments rarely gives these young people opportunities to reflect on their behaviour. In this exploratory investigation, an adapted version of the ACS, a recently developed Australian self-report measure of coping, was administered to young people with intellectual disabilities who were in employment (n = 4) or who were unemployed (n = 18). It was found that employed young people coped in more positive ways than did the unemployed group. The only distinguishing characteristic between the ways in which males and females coped was a declaration by females that they lacked the strategies with which to cope. There was a general concurrence between self-reported coping actions and those reported by significant others. The findings suggest that an adapted version of the ACS may be useful with this population of young people. Further development and validation of the instrument with this population are recommended.