Choice-making in vocational activities planning: recommendations from job coaches

Choice in the job seeking process may lead to increased satisfaction with the chosen job, and improve attention, performance, and motivation. Consequently, providing opportunities to express choices and interests while planning vocational activities is a key factor in achieving employment outcomes. Despite their commitment to promoting choice-making, service providers encounter important barriers to understanding the vocational interests of persons with intellectual disabilities who may have difficulty expressing their choices verbally. Methods of recording choices expressed through nonverbal means of communication are therefore needed. Such a method was designed and field-tested. Interviews were conducted with participating job coaches to assess its practical value and provide recommendations pertinent to its implementation and dissemination. This step is crucial to the knowledge-to-action process since it tailors research findings to make them meaningful to daily practice. The authors present results relevant to improving choice-making opportunities in the job seeking and planning process of persons with intellectual disabilities. The results demonstrate the need for training to enable support staff to embed choice-making opportunities in the daily life of persons with intellectual disabilities.