“You Shouldn’t Look at Us Strangely”: An Exploratory Study on Personal Perspectives on Quality of Life of Adolescents with Emotional and Behavioral Disorders in Residential Youth Care

Chris Swerts (), Jessica De Maeyer, Marco Lombardi, Inge Waterschoot, Wouter Vanderplasschen and Claudia Claes
Additional contact information
Chris Swerts: University College Ghent
Jessica De Maeyer: University College Ghent
Marco Lombardi: University College Ghent
Inge Waterschoot: vzw Diensten- en Begeleidingscentrum Openluchtopvoeding
Wouter Vanderplasschen: Ghent University
Claudia Claes: University College Ghent

Applied Research in Quality of Life, 2019, vol. 14, issue 4, No 2, 867-889

Abstract: Abstract Adolescents with Emotional and Behavioral Disorders (EBD) have complex needs and experience challenges in various developmental areas and life domains. The majority of current studies regarding Quality of Life (QOL) among adolescents often adopt a quantitative design to assess health-related aspects of QOL. While considerable progress has been made in acknowledging the rights of children and adolescents to express their views on life and well-being, there remains a lack of research regarding adolescents with EBD and their personal perspectives on QOL. This qualitative study aims to address this gap. Focus groups (N = 6) were conducted with 25 adolescents aged 13 to 17 years living in a large-scale residential care organization. An expert panel, comprising six experts, was convened to classify the results from the focus groups (i.e., indicators) according to the QOL framework by Schalock and Verdugo (2002). An in-depth overview of the wide variety of aspects adolescents value with regard to their QOL was presented. The findings highlighted the importance of adopting a broad and holistic approach, instead of a traditional health-related and deficit-oriented one, when aiming to enhance the QOL of adolescents with EBD. Furthermore, several benefits for research and clinical practice relating to adolescents’ personal perspectives on QOL were discussed.

Keywords: Emotional and behavioral disorders; Quality of life; Personal perspectives; Indicators; Adolescents (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11482-017-9534-7 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:ariqol:v:14:y:2019:i:4:d:10.1007_s11482-017-9534-7

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/journal/11482

DOI: 10.1007/s11482-017-9534-7

Access Statistics for this article

Applied Research in Quality of Life is currently edited by Daniel Shek

More articles in Applied Research in Quality of Life from Springer, International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().