Employment practices as experienced by persons with intellectual disability,employers,and employment specialists across Canada

2.1 Research design

The parent project of the current quantitative study sought to explore opportunities to address barriers of employment among persons with intellectual disabilities including information that could be used to inform accessibility standards. The parent project was led by Inclusion Canada (www.inclusioncanada.ca), a national organization whose key purpose is to advocate for the rights and inclusion of persons with ID. Inclusion Canada commissioned research partners from University of British Columbia Canadian Institute for Inclusion and Citizenship (https://cic.arts.ubc.ca), an academic research center primarily focused on research related to social and organizational policy and full inclusion and citizenship of persons with intellectual and developmental disabilities; and People First of Canada (https://www.peoplefirstofcanada.ca), a national advocacy organization representing the voices of persons with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

The overall project involved seven distinct phases, each gleaning information from the prior phase to enhance the following phases. The seven phases included: 1) comprehensive literature review; 2) jurisdictional scan of Canadian jurisdictions and select international jurisdictions as well as a sample of Canadian employers; 3) qualitative research interviews with self-advocates, employers and, employment specialists; 4) national survey of the same three cohorts noted, which included both closed- and open-ended questions; 5) meeting of expert advisors to discuss findings from phases 1–4; 6) focus groups with the same three groups of participants identified above as well as a focus group with family and friends of self-advocates; and 7) another meeting of expert advisors to discuss and seek input on recommendations generated from the overall project.

Across phases, research design and implementation was informed by critical disability studies (CDS) theory and scholarship, emphasizing inquiry into ways in which institutions and employment policies serve to further dis-able people by creating and reinforcing barriers to accessibility of employment (Minich, 2017). The research team was made up of members with diverse abilities, and included persons with intellectual disabilities who took on key roles in decision making related to study design, data collection (including leading focus groups) and analysis, and knowledge translation. Person-first language was used throughout the study to honour the preferred style of language of research team members with lived experience.

2.2 Participants

This project sought to gather information from three distinct groups of adults (18+) living in Canada with experience in relation to paid employment (not including volunteer roles, supported employment, or internships) as, or of, persons with intellectual disabilities: Self-advocates with identified intellectual disability, employers, and employment specialists. Self-advocates were included if they had current or prior experience with paid, competitive employment in Canada. Employers were included if they had currently or previously employed at least one individual with an intellectual disability in Canada. Employment specialists were included if they currently or previously had supported at least one person with an intellectual disability through any stage of competitive employment in Canada. Participants were excluded if they were unable to read or respond to (independently or with support) an online survey that was offered in both English and French.

Participants were recruited through listserv emails and social media advertisements sent out by People First of Canada, Inclusion Canada, and the Canadian Institute for Inclusion and Citizenship sharing information about the project and inviting participants across all three groups to contribute to an online survey sharing their experiences as relates to paid, competitive employment of persons with intellectual disabilities. The links to participate (in either English or French) were attached to email and social media adverts so potential participants did not have to identify themselves to the recruitment groups or the research team in order to participate.

2.3 Instruments

A sequential approach was taken to survey development, meaning the survey was designed to complement and expand upon emerging findings from the qualitative interviews conducted in the previous phase (3) of the multi-phase project, in an attempt to enrich the depth and transformational applicability of findings into future policy and practice (Fuentes, 2008; Ivankova & Kawamura, 2010). An online survey was selected as the method for data collection for two key reasons (1) the scope of potential participants that could participate from across the country might add unique findings to supplement the interview data, and (2) aligning with the CDS theories informing this project, online research participation has been highlighted as a means of being inclusive in research where participants may have differing communication needs and abilities (Ison, 2009; Lloyd et al., 2006).

The survey was developed collaboratively with all research team members and study partners, with additional feedback from external subject matter experts and two self-advocates with intellectual disabilities who reviewed the final versions for plain language and accessibility. Three plain language versions of the survey stemmed from the original, with small changes in language depending on the specific group of participants the survey was being directed at. Following this, the surveys were translated into French by a professional translator hired by Inclusion Canada.

The survey invited participants to share some non-identifying demographic information, including their province/territory of residence in Canada, number of paid jobs to date (self-advocates), and/or number of clients/employees with intellectual disabilities. Then they were prompted to respond to both closed- and open-ended questions about their experiences across different stages of employment as a person, employer, or supporter of a person with intellectual disabilities including recruitment, hiring, integration, and performance management. Many of the closed-ended questions included multiple choice options that were generated based on the responses shared in the qualitative interviews, with an option always given for ‘other, please specify’ to offer participants the chance to clarify or elaborate further on their response.

2.4 Procedures

Following university research ethics board review and approval (UBC Research Ethics Board #H21-00295), all three surveys were released in English and French in October 2021 for data collection via online secure survey platform UBC Survey Tool, hosted by Qualtrics (https://ubc.qualtrics.com). All three surveys remained open for three months, after which participant quotas and data saturation on open-ended responses was achieved for the self-advocate and employment specialist surveys. The employer survey was left open for an additional month following another push for recruitment in an attempt to increase the low number of employers who had responded. Participants were not offered an honorarium or reimbursement for their time for participation.

Prior to viewing survey questions, all participants viewed a cover letter sharing more information about the project, contact information for the research team and ethics support, and assurance that they could skip any question and/or exit the survey at any time with no consequence to them. Participants were encouraged not to share any self-identifying information, and were assured that if they inadvertently did so, that this would be excluded from the dataset. Self-advocates were invited to consider if they would like assistance with completing the survey and if so, were encouraged to either have a support person present or available while completing the survey, or to contact People First of Canada who would connect them with a third-party support person.

2.5 Analysis

Initial analysis of open-ended survey responses revealed significant thematic consensus with the themes found in the previous phase (3) of the project. Accordingly, a post-hoc analysis was completed merging the qualitative findings from phases 3 and 4 together into a comprehensive description (Seixas et al., 2018) shared separately from this manuscript (Morris et al., 2024).

The findings reported in this manuscript were generated from a descriptive analysis (Brown Breslin, 2020) of the closed-ended (quantitative) responses to the online survey. Descriptive analysis was conducted online within the secure UBC Survey Tool to demonstrate a summary of the potential patterns in data across participants of this study, in relation to their experiences with inclusiveness in recruitment, hiring, integration, and performance management of persons with intellectual disabilities across Canada. Descriptive analysis was purposely selected to capture an exploratory representation of data as this is an area that is relatively unaddressed in the research literature to date.

3.1 Participant characteristics

Across all three surveys, the survey link was entered 246 times. 198 participants continued through the informed consent, after which 47 participants either dropped out or were screened out due to not meeting inclusion criteria. Two employment specialists responded to only the first question following the screening (“in which province or territory do you work?”) and then exited the survey, so their responses were excluded from analysis. All questions had at least a 15% response rate, excluding the final question asking if there is anything else that participants would like to share, which very few participants responded to.

A final sample of 149 participants contributed to the survey (77 employment specialists, 59 self-advocates, and 13 employers). Notably, almost all participants completed the survey in English, over half (62%) of participants were located in British Columbia or Ontario, and none of the participants were located in Northwest Territories, Prince Edward Island, or Nunavut. See Table 1 below for detailed information about overall participant demographics.

Responses to closed-ended questions are organized by stage (recruitment, hiring, integration, and performance management). Employers and self-advocates were also directly asked about their awareness of diversity and inclusion policies or statements.

4.1 Limitations

The most important limitation of this study is that the sample is small, considering the national geographical scope that it is intended to cover. In particular, the sample size of employers represented less than 10% of the participants in this project, and over half of the employers were non-profit organizations. Low participation of employers in research exploring disability and employment is a known challenge (Lysaght et al., 2015), and despite additional efforts made to recruit more employers to participate, this study was unable to overcome this challenge. It would be of benefit for future research to explore this further, perhaps first through purposeful inquiry into the factors influencing those who do choose to participate.

Some limitations are also present due to the online survey method of data collection. For example, though the recruitment materials were distributed nationally, it is unknown who or how many people actually saw the call for participants, nor how recruitment methods may have influenced the disproportionate rates of participation across provinces. Additionally, while recruitment and data collection materials shared an intention to learn from participants experiences with paid, competitive employment (with a specifier that this did not include volunteer positions or supported employment); the asynchronous collection of data meant researchers were not able to probe in more detail participants’ understandings of paid and competitive employment. Therefore, some of the findings may inadvertently be representative of participants’ experiences with volunteer or supported employment positions.

To address these methodological and sample size limitations, descriptive analysis was chosen to share a summarized representation of commonalities across participants, rather than attempt to offer an inferential analysis of how this data should apply across all employees and employment settings across the country.

Other limitations are of note regarding the homogeneous nature of the sample of participants in this study. Specifically, the survey responses indicate that the majority of self-advocate participants had no support with completing the survey, the majority of employment specialists noted that at least half of their clients with intellectual disabilities are successful in securing work, and the majority of employers noted that their employees with intellectual disabilities have worked for them for an average of three years or more. These three demographic factors may indicate that the responses shared in the survey are more representative of successful employment stories than the reality experienced by many persons with intellectual disabilities in the broader community. To provide informed consent and complete a survey with no support requires a person to have some independence in administrative-type tasks similar to those required to apply for employment and/or employment supports. Considering that administrative barriers were identified in this study as being a barrier to recruitment and hiring, it may be the case that these barriers are far more significantly impactful than this study was able to capture.

4.2 Future research

Future research should focus exploration at the limitations and gaps in knowledge noted above, particularly examining barriers and facilitators to employer participation in research relating to disability and employment. There may also be benefit for future research to examine reasons for the limited range of industries that the employment specialists indicated their clients with intellectual disabilities apply to. It may be the case that persons with intellectual disabilities who seek the support of an employment specialist are less interested in industries such as administration, education, information technology, and creative arts; but there may also be an element of ableism and stigma associated with intellectual disabilities that is influencing employment specialists and employers to be more open to persons with intellectual disabilities working in food services, retail, and warehousing. A more focused exploration of this may offer opportunities to change practices and promote better inclusion of persons with intellectual disabilities across a variety of industries.

Future researchers may want to draw on the findings from this study to develop and conduct a quantitative inferential exploration of data, to make inferences that may be more likely to generalize beyond the participants of the study (Brown Breslin, 2020). Additionally, future researchers should consider stepping outside of traditional research design and methodological approaches to explore how this may impact the success of recruitment and participation of more diverse samples of participants. For example, institutional ethnography, case study, and participatory research methods have all been identified as potentially beneficial methodologies for research on disability and vocation or employment as they may allow for richer data to emerge in collaboration with members of the community being examined (Hayre et al., 2022).