Evaluating the Performance Diagnostic Checklist-Human Services to Treat Performance Problems of Adults with Intellectual Disabilities

Unemployment continues to be a problem for individuals with disabilities. Supported employment provides occupational supports for the acquisition and maintenance of employment. While there are resources available to use when providing these supports, individuals who are involved may benefit from a systematic tool to assess and treat performance problems of individuals with disabilities. The Performance Diagnostic Checklist-Human Services (PDC-HS) is an experimentally validated tool used to address performance problems with employees in human services settings. This study evaluated the application of the PDC-HS to three adults with intellectual disabilities working in supported employment. Researchers evaluated the tool by assessing and treating participant performance of a shelf-cleaning task. The results of the tool identified insufficient training and prompting as barriers to participant performance. The PDC-HS indicated intervention package (behavioral skills training with antecedent prompting), was effective in increasing the participants\u27 performance of the cleaning task across all dependent variables. Responses on a social validity questionnaire showed that all participants thought the study was fair, liked the intervention, thought it helped them improve at their job and could help other people