Development of the Supported Decision Making Inventory System

Abstract

Supported decision making has received increased attention as an alternative to guardianship and a means to enable people with intellectual and developmental disabilities to exercise their right to legal capacity. Assessments are needed that can used by people with disabilities and their systems of supports to identify and plan for needed supports to enable decision making. This article describes the steps taken to develop such an assessment tool, the Supported Decision Making Inventory System (SDMIS), and initial feedback received from self-advocates with intellectual disability. The three sections of the SDMIS (Supported Decision Making Personal Factors Inventory, Supported Decision Making Environmental Demands Inventory, and Decision Making Autonomy Inventory) are described and implications for future research, policy, and practice are discussed.

Refining the Supported Decision Making Inventory

“…The pilot version of the SDMI (SDMI, Shogren & Wehmeyer, ) was administered to participants in this study. As described previously, the pilot version of the SDMI was developed based on a comprehensive review of the literature on supported decision‐making from a social‐ecological perspective and a review of related assessments (Shogren, Wehmeyer, Lassman, & Forber‐Pratt, ).…”

“…As noted, focus groups were conducted with adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities to generate feedback on the assessment structure and questions and modifications made, as needed, to clarify questions (Shogren, Wehmeyer, Uyanik, & Heidrich, ). However, no questions were dropped based on the focus groups, as the purpose of the present analysis was to collect data to enable the analysis of the items and winnow the number of items to a more manageable number that represented the theoretical structure of the scale.…”

“…Building on this framework and other work in the field (Arstein‐Kerslake et al, ; Bigby et al, ; Bigby, Whiteside, & Douglas, ; Campanella, ; Hickson & Khemka, ), Shogren, Wehmeyer, Uyanik, and Heidrich () described the creation of a pilot version of the Supported Decision Making Inventory (SDMI). The creation of the tool was based on an extensive review of the literature (Shogren, Wehmeyer, Lassman, & Forber‐Pratt, ) organized around the domains of a social‐ecological approach to supported decision‐making.…”

“…The creation of the tool was based on an extensive review of the literature (Shogren, Wehmeyer, Lassman, & Forber‐Pratt, ) organized around the domains of a social‐ecological approach to supported decision‐making. The stated purpose of the creation of the tool was to develop a means for “people with disabilities and their systems of supports to identify decision making capacities, environmental demands for decision making, and supports needed for decision making” (Shogren, Wehmeyer, Uyanik, & Heidrich, , p. 434) to inform the implementation of support decision‐making. The pilot version of the tool was organized into three inventories with 114 items divided across subsections: (1) Personal Factors Inventory (PFI), (2) Environmental Demands Inventory (EDI), and (3) Decision‐Making Autonomy Inventory (DMAI).…”

“…The pilot version of the SDMI was reviewed with focus groups of self‐advocates for feedback (Shogren, Wehmeyer, Uyanik, & Heidrich, ), and recommended changes to wording and formatting made. The next phase of research (described in this paper) was to collect data from adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities to enable the reduction of the number of items and refinements consistent with the structure of the scale and its underlying theoretical framework.…”