TACID Survey by PLU Nursing Students
How effective are disability support meetings at the TACID center in increasing independence?
March/May 2007: Results Presented at TACID’s Annual Meeting on May 23rd 2007
1. Sample Size:
The sample size of survey respondents consisted of 222 individuals. As half of the questions were quantitative and the other half were qualitative, we were able to complete a more thorough statistical analysis for questions 1A, 2A, 3A, 4, 5A, 6 and 7. For our qualitative data, we were able to sum the number of similar responses.
2. Goal of Promoting Independence:
For question 1A, “Does your support group help promote your independence?” 81% stated yes, 11% stated they didn’t know, and 8% stated no (178 “yes”, 25 “don’t know”, and 17 “no”, out of 220). Those who stated “yes” for this question responded with many different reasons how these support groups promote their independence. The most common response was it was a way to get suggestions related to their condition (15% of all respondents), next was that it is a place where they could talk about their problems (11% of all respondents), it gives them a place to go (10%), it is a place to get encouragement (9%), it is a place to get empowered (9%), and it is a place to learn about their disability (4%).
3. Goal of Reducing Isolation:
For question 2A, “Does your support group help reduce your feelings of isolation?” 86% states yes, 8% stated they didn’t know, and 6% stated no (190 “yes”, 18 “don’t know”, and 13 “no” out of 221). Respondents stated that going to their support group reduces their feelings of isolation by giving them the opportunity to meet others with the same disability (25% of all respondents), a place to make friends (21%), it gives them a reason to get out more (10%), a place to hear others stories of how to cope (10%), a place to hear about outings in the community (4%), and a place to do hobbies (3%).
4. Goal of Referring Friends and Family:
For question 3A, “Have you referred friends and/or family members with disabilities to any support group that meets at TACID?” 58% stated yes, 37% stated no and 5% stated they didn’t know (127 “yes”, 80 “no”, and 12 “don’t know” out of 219). Respondents stated many reasons why they had or had not referred someone else to use TACID services. For those that had referred someone else, the reasons were that they knew the friend or family member would receive help from TACID (14% of all respondents), TACID is a great organization (10%), and so that their friend or family member will receive support (5%). For those that had not referred anyone to TACID, the main reason stated was because they didn’t know anyone who needed TACID services (12%).
5. TACID Staff Assistance:
For question 4, “If you go to TACID Staff with a need or concern about your group’s meeting arrangements, do you feel like the problem gets resolved?” 44% of all respondents had never approached staff about a problem, 42% stated yes, 7% stated they didn’t know, 6% stated no, and 1% stated sometimes (95 “never went to staff”, 92 “yes”, 15 “ don’t know”, 12 “no”, and 3 “sometimes” out of 217).
6. Assessment of Meeting Facility:
Question 5A, “Are you satisfied with the room or space where your group
meeting is held?” 93% stated yes, 6% stated no, and <1% stated they didn’t know (204 “yes”, 13 “no”, and 2 “don’t know” out of 219). Although only 13 respondents stated they were not satisfied with their meeting room, 26 people left suggestions to improve the room. The largest majority stated they would like better temperature control in their room (4% of all respondents), others stated they would like better chairs that did not break (3%), and the other significant group of people said they would like better acoustics in the room (2%). It is noteworthy that all respondents who stated they would like better acoustics were attending the Hearing Loss Association support group.
7. Fundraising Assistance:
Question 6, “If TACID is financially unable to make this room or space
improvement on its own, would you be willing to help raise the money for these improvements” 47% said yes, 42% said maybe, and 12% stated no (100 “yes”, 89 “maybe”, and 25 “no” out of 214). The respondents then had a chance to put an “X” next to 7 possible ways they would be willing to help TACID: planning at fundraising events (of which 23% of all respondents checked), assisting at fundraising events (23%), donating money (33%), volunteering time (53%), grant writing (9%), serving as a speaker to present financial need to the community (12%), and other (3% of whom they majority stated they would be willing to pay a $1 fee for each meeting time).
8. Group Meeting Times:
For question 7, “Are you satisfied with the meeting time of your group?” 93% stated yes, 4% stated they didn’t know, and 3% stated no (203 “yes”, 8 “don’t know”, and 7 “no” out of 218). For the 7 individuals who stated “no,” 2 stated they would like a later meeting time and 2 stated they would simply like a different time. There were no other statistically significant reasons for their lack of satisfaction with the meeting time.
Correlations:
As shown in the Table, questions 1A and 2A are positively related (r = .190, p = .01) which indicates that people who identified experiencing an increase in independence also identified reduced feelings of isolation. Questions 2A and 4 are positively related (r = .200, p = .01) which means that if the respondent feels that coming to TACID reduces their feelings of isolation, then they also feel that problems they have get resolved when they tell a staff person. Questions 2A and 7 are positively related (r = .185, p = .01) which indicates that people who stated having reduced feelings of isolation also tended to be satisfied with the meeting time of their support group.
There is a negative relation between Question 3A and 4 which means that individuals are less likely to refer someone to TACID if they have not had question or concern met by telling a staff person (r =-.212, p = .01). There is also a negative correlation between Question 3A and 7 (r = -.140, p = .05), which indicates that there is statistical significance between people who refer others to TACID and being happy with the meeting time of their support group.
TABLE
Correlation between Questions 1A, 2A, 3A, 4, 5A, 6, and 7.
Limitations:
After administering the survey, we soon became aware of some questions and concerns that would ideally be addressed before administering another similar survey. As our sample population was made up of individuals with a variety of different disabilities, there was a wide range of ability to comprehend the survey questions. Some respondents stated that they did not understand what “independence” and “isolation” meant. As these two terms are the main focus of TACID’s mission statement and the focus of our first two questions, these would ideally be simplified. The term “loneliness” could be used in place of “isolation” for example, and instead of “independence,” perhaps more descriptive wording, such as “ability to take care of yourself.”
Besides editing the survey for increased readability, there could also be changes to increase the likelihood of a response. For example, when a question has a direct “no,” “yes,” or “I don’t know” response that needs to be checked off, we got an extremely high rate of response. When the question asked for a written response describing their experience, we lost between 33-55% of responses. In a future survey, the most common or expected answers could be listed so the participant can simply check them off. This would not only increase the number of responses, but would also be a more descriptive indicator of the participant’s feelings or opinion. This would be especially true for those participants with decreased skill at writing or expressing thought in a written form.
Besides the limitations of the survey itself, we were also limited by time. In order to complete our project on time, we were unable to survey many TACID participants who happened to not attend the group meeting when we administered the survey. We were also unable to have volunteers from TACID complete a preliminary survey in order to evaluate its readability before it was administered. We were lucky to have some excellent input from TACID’s Executive Director and a few of the group facilitators, but an actual test sample group would have been ideal.
Another aspect to the study which we would have liked to address further relates to questions 1 and 2. For both of these question, we asked how TACID increases independence or decreased isolation if you stated “yes” to either of the questions. A respondent who said “no” to these two questions did not get the option to state their opinion further. This would have given a lot of interesting feedback about how TACID may not be meeting their needs. This is yet again, something which would be ideally added to a survey in the future.
Question readability, response options to choose from, and ensuring sufficient time to conduct a survey of a greater number of participants would be ideal issues to address for any group attempting a similar project in the future.
Conclusions:
Based on our survey results, TACID is an effective agency that is meeting its mission statement goals of increasing the independence and decreasing the isolation of the majority of individuals with disabilities who use its services. With 81% of responders agreeing that support groups help increase their independence, and 86% saying that they help decrease their isolation, it seems clear that the majority of support groups that meet at TACID are helping it to achieve its mission. However, since our long term goal was to attain a 90% satisfaction rate with clients stating the support groups decrease isolation and increase independence, our objective is not currently met. (This was a bench mark set by the Students and not by TACID).
For our next survey, an objective could be to increase the client satisfaction by 10% regarding increased independence and decreased isolation.
Approximately 2.4% of all disabled individuals in Pierce County utilize services at TACID. This small percentage may show that a lack of knowledge of resources available exists among the disabled population. Perhaps this percentage is small, however, because there is not enough space or staff to serve more people. If this is the case, it could demonstrate a need to enlarge TACID in order to meet the needs of a greater proportion of the population. Even though TACID serves only a small percentage of the disabled population, it is clearly benefiting its participants.
Our project goal to determine if the support groups were helping their participants to meet TACID’s expressed goals of increasing independence and decreasing isolation was completed successfully with a great deal of help from TACID staff members. Our hope is that the findings from this project will provide TACID with an indication of their success, as well as ideas on how to improve their services. We also hope that future surveys will be conducted to ensure the open communication between TACID participants and staff members in order to continually improve upon the services available to the disabled community.
Students: Melanie Davis, Erin McKay and Rebecca Waite
Supervisor: Mindy Schaffner,
PLU School of Nursing