Employment at closure is associated with enhanced quality of life and subjective well-being for persons with spinal cord injuries. Rehabilitation Counseling Bulletin, 54, 6–14. doi:10.1177/0034355210367685

This study assessed whether persons with spinal cord injuries who had been successfully rehabilitated into employment following receipt of rehabilitation services had better quality of life and subjective well-being than the unsuccessfully rehabilitated who did not obtain employment following receipt of rehabilitation services. Persons who were successfully rehabilitated had a significantly higher overall quality of life and health and higher quality of life in their physical health, psychological health, social relationships, and environmental domains than the unsuccessfully rehabilitated. The successfully rehabilitated also had higher psychological, financial, and physical well-being than the unsuccessfully rehabilitated. Rehabilitation counselors can use quality of life and subjective well-being measures to provide more focused interventions during rehabilitation and as an outcome measure in addition to employment upon completion of rehabilitation services. Keywords quality of life, subjective well-being, employment, spinal cord injury Quality of life (QOL) is “a multidimensional construct, involving assessment of psychological, social, economic, physical, and other domains that may be targeted in reha-bilitation counseling ” (Bishop, Chapin, & Miller, 2008, p. 51) and is used as an outcome criterion (Aigner et al., 2006; Bishop et al., 2008) for people with disabilities. QOL has been defined by the World Health Organization (WHO) as “individuals ’ perception of their position in life in the context of the culture and value systems in which they live and in relation to their goals, expectations, standards