Summary: This Doctoral thesis is focused on the evaluation of the quality of life of people with intellectual disabilities that are developing their job skills in 7 occupational centers or job training, Montevideo (Uruguay). The objectives of the study were to: 1) identify strengths and weaknesses in industrial subjects evaluated; 2) determine the incidence of personal variables such as age, gender, and disability associated deficiencies and severity of disability in the performance labor; 3) determine the level of perceived quality of life of the participants, and 4) relate the perceived quality of life with work performance. These goals have been realized on the following assumptions: (1) There is no significant difference in work performance on the basis of sex and age of the participants. (2) The job performance will be affected by the number of defects and disabilities associated, so that more of them will mean lower results. (3) The job performance will be affected by the severity of mental retardation, so that greater severity was associated with lower results. (4) There shall be no significant differences in the trials on perceptions of quality of life reported by the three groups (people with disabilities, occupational and family). (5) There is a relationship between job skills and perception of subjective well-being, so that a higher job performance will be associated with greater satisfaction with the quality of life. (6) The perception of the quality of life and its dimensions will be determined by factors of overall functioning (ie impairment, disability) and operating labor (ie scores in the PPL). The study included 210 participants, as follows: 100 adolescents and young people with Intellectual Disability, 100 concerning families and 10 professional evaluators. Two instruments were used for evaluation: the Personality Profile Labor for evaluating workers Occupational Centers (Bolton and Roessler,
1986, and adapted by Jenaro Rodriguez, 2004) and the Quality of Life Scale (Schalock and Keith, 1993; adapted to the Spanish population by Crespo, 2003). By contrast assumptions were used statistical parametric after the finding of compliance with the assumptions of normality and homogeneity of variance. The results indicated that: (1) users of older get higher scores on job performance, (2) gender has no bearing on work performance, (3) a lesser number or severity of defects and disabilities resulting in better performance . (4) confirms the relationship between job skills and subjective well-being. (5) Self-Determination / independence is predicted by scores high in the skills to adapt to work, greater age and a lower severity of mental retardation. For its part, the Social Membership / Inclusion in the community is predicted by scores high in the skills to adapt to work, a low severity of mental retardation and fewer disabilities associated. All these findings help raise support proposals to reduce the impact of the limitations and encourage the participation of workers with disabilities.
