Development and Evaluation of an Evidence-Based Advocacy Training Package for People with Disabilities

Abstract

Self-advocacy skills are critical to people with disabilities because millions still face discrimination and barriers in their daily lives. Advocacy skills can help empower people with disabilities to speak up when they face discrimination. A critical literature review on self-advocacy skills training was conducted and showed that most of the studies were conducted with students with learning disabilities in the educational setting. This review emphasized the need for more research to study self-advocacy training with individuals with disabilities other than learning disabilities in community settings. The purpose of current study was to develop the Advocacy Training Package (ATP) for people with disabilities in the community and evaluate its effects with a mixed method research design. Study 1 was a focus group study. The results confirmed the importance of advocacy skills training and illustrated different advocacy methods and their application. The focus group data helped create the National Advocacy Survey, which was used in Study 2. Study 2 used the National Advocacy Survey to examine the preferred advocacy methods with different applications. Phone calls, emails, visits and letters were most often used advocacy methods by disability rights advocates. Results of Study 1 and 2 informed the development of the ATP, which was the intervention used in Study 3. Study 3 tested ATP’s effects on improving self-advocacy skills in the form of letter and email writing, and phone calls for people with disabilities using a single subject research design. Self-advocacy skills were improved across participants.