A study of the relationship of parental satisfaction and parental perception of the success of communication with clinicians at the University of Houston Interdisciplinary Clinic for Children with Learning Disabilities

This research project examined the relationship between parental satisfaction with services received at the Interdisciplinary Clinic for Children with Learning Disabilities and the parents’ perception of the quality of communication between clinicians and parents in this clinic. The relationship between these variables was also examined while controlling for the following intervening variables: race, father's educational level, mother's educational level, income and length of time since termination. It was hypothesized that parents who perceived the level of communication between themselves and the clinicians as being successful would be more satisfied with services received at the Interdisciplinary Clinic than parents who perceived communication with clinicians as being less successful. It was further hypothesized that this relationship between communication and parental satisfaction with the clinic program would be stronger with respondents whose families were non-white, earned a higher income, in which the fathers and mothers had higher educational levels and in those families who completed the program during the last year of its existence. Questionnaires were sent to all families who had participated in the program at the Interdisciplinary Clinic for Children with Learning Disabilities during the three years of its existence. Out of the seventy-five questionnaires which were sent out, forty-eight were returned completed and were subsequently used for this study. The questionnaires used as the research instrument was devised following extensive review of the literature on the hypothesized relationship. The researchers developed a series of questions designed to elicit attitudes of the parent respondent regarding their satisfaction with the program and the effectiveness of communication between parent and clinicians. Client satisfaction was conceptualized using the three-dimentional scale described by Daly and Hulka (1975) in which professional competence of clinicians, personal qualities of clinicians and cost/convenience of the program were measured. Questions were formulated about the communication process using Reusch's paradigm described in Disturbed Communication (1951). Data analysis consisted of frequency distributions for each of the demographic variables, satisfaction variables, communication variables and for the composite satisfaction and communication scores. Means and standard deviations were obtained for the composite satisfaction score and for the composite communication score. The Pearson productmoment correlation coefficient was computed for the composite communication score with the composite satisfaction score to test the major hypothesis. Then the Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient was computed for the independent variable with the dependent variable while controlling for these variables: race, father's educational level, mother's educational level, income and length of time since completion of the program. The data is presented in numerical tabular form called crossbreaks since this was considered to be the simplest way to analyze and present data. In this study, a highly significant positive relationship was found between parent's perception of success in communication and parental satisfaction with services received at the Interdisciplinary Clinic. A significant, positive relationship was found between these variables while controlling for each of the intervening variables except for high income families. The relationship between the independent and dependent variables was stronger in nonwhite families, in families of lower income, in families whose fathers have a lower education level and in those families who participated in the program within the last year of its existence. In higher income families, the findings of this study seem to indicate that there are other variables in addition to communication that effect the client's perception of satisfaction. In this population, the quality of communication seems to be only one of several necessary factors that effects the client's perception of satisfaction.Social Work, Graduate College o