The Efficacy of the “Snoezelen” in the Management of Children With Mental Retardation Who Exhibit Maladaptive Behaviours

A Randomized Controlled Trial on Clinical Efficacy of Massage Therapy in a Multisensory Environment for Residents with Severe and Profound Intellectual Disabilities

“…Their Cohen's d effect sizes in post-tests were between 1.4-2.4, indicating large effects; and thus the required sample size would be 10-11 each group (i.e., 38-44 for four study groups) at the level of significance at 0.05 and study power of 0.80 (Portney & Watkins 2009), expecting an attrition rate at 20% (Shapiro et al 1997). Since it was uncertain about the response rate, we randomly selected 60 participants (n=15 in each group) in order to ensure that there would be sufficient to meet the minimum sample size (11 per group) if 16 of them (27%) refused to participate.…”

“…The maladaptive and adaptive behaviours were assessed by the 22-item Behaviour Checklist (BC) developed by Shapiro et al (1997). There were 16 items for maladaptive behaviours (MB) such as stereotypic and self-stimulating behaviours, and 6 items for adaptive behaviours (AB) such as initiation of communicative attempts, rapport building, and concentration.…”

“…Estimation of sample size was based on the findings of Shapiro's (1997) study, using challenging behaviours as the primary outcome (Shapiro et al 1997). Their Cohen's d effect sizes in post-tests were between 1.4-2.4, indicating large effects; and thus the required sample size would be 10-11 each group (i.e., 38-44 for four study groups) at the level of significance at 0.05 and study power of 0.80 (Portney & Watkins 2009), expecting an attrition rate at 20% (Shapiro et al 1997).…”

“…There were 16 items for maladaptive behaviours (MB) such as stereotypic and self-stimulating behaviours, and 6 items for adaptive behaviours (AB) such as initiation of communicative attempts, rapport building, and concentration. The BC was validated for MSE intervention (Chan et al 2007;Shapiro et al 1997), with observation schedule per minute. The inter-rater reliability of BC was satisfactory with inter-class correlation of 0.66 for maladaptive behaviour and of 0.80 for adaptive behaviour in this study, similar to the original study (Shapiro et al 1997).…”

Snoezelen: Children with Intellectual Disability and Working with the Whole Family

“…Over time though, this has changed and a recent review [4] identified 21 research studies, where 14 studies involved persons with ID and 7 studies involved people with dementia. Of these studies, 14 reported positive effects within the Snoezelen room session, 4 showed positive postsession effects, and 2 had long-term effects and one was inconclusive.Snoezelen was first introduced in Israel within a day-treatment center for children with ID in 1993 [2,5] and the first Snoezelen room within the Division for Mental Retardation (DMR) was established at one of the residential care centers in 1995. Today in Israel, this method is used in more than 25 residential care centers and 3 community settings for persons with ID.…”