The Arc's Self-Determination Scale: Procedural Guidelines

emediative in nature, this is hardly surprising. It is particularly
important for adolescents to focus on developing their strengths so
that they can accomplish more in these areas. Lipsky and Gartner
(1989) pointed out that if universities adopted the same structure
that the special education process uses, college students would
enter university and spend four years trying to improve, even
slightly, on the activities and subjects they have the most trouble
doing, while basically ignoring areas of strengths and interests.
Secondary special education programs should adopt, instead, the
model used in postgraduate education, where students focus almost
exclusively on their strengths and interests and attempt to utilize
these skills to their benefit.
Why is Self-Determination Important?
People with disabilities have made it clear that self-determination
is an outcome that is important to them. Williams (1989) stated
“We want it [self-determination as a complete way of life] not just
for ourselves but for all people with disabilities. Indeed, we want
it for all people -- period. And, we want it now” (p. 16). Kennedy
(1993) said that “what people need to realize is that selfdetermination
can be different things to different people. All
people should have the opportunity to be self-determining, based
on what that means for them” (p. 11). It is not difficult to
understand that when a person has limited control and choice in his
or her life, the reclamation of such control and choice becomes an
issue of intense importance.
In our opinion, the call for self-determination by people with
disabilities is, in and of itself, sufficient justification for focusing
on this outcome. However, there are other reasons that it is
important to focus limited resources, including time, personnel and
money, to achieve self-determination for individuals with
disabilities. These reasons include the importance of selfdetermination
to experience an enhanced quality of life and
integration into one’s community and recent findings concerning
adult outcomes for people with disabilities.
Self-Determination and Quality of Life
We have opted to frame causal agency within the concept of
quality of life because we believe that, along with its historical ties
to the empowerment movement, self-determination is associated
with quality of life issues. Schalock (1990) provided six
fundamental quality of life principles: 1) Quality of life for persons
with disabilities is composed of those same factors and
relationships that are important to persons without disabilities; 2)
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