Self-Reports for Factors Impacting on the Ability of People with Acquired Disabilities to Obtain and/or Sustain Employment: An Australian Study

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The purpose of this research is to study the factors impacting on the ability of people with acquired disabilities to gain and sustain employment, as well as finding a possible solutions to employment participation problems that would guide policy developers, employers and people with acquired disabilities. Several research have shown that people with a disability that can categorized as 'acquired' struggle to sustain employment and often suffer more discrimination than the other cohorts. Yet, not much research have sought to understand acquired disability in relation to employment outcomes. The study will follow an Active Case Study research design comprising of a casy study and intervention on 50 participants. The process will follow the following stages. Participants will be asked to complete a self report questionnaire to gain an insight of their experiences as jobseekers and perceptions of their own disabilities. This will be followed by unstructured observation to learn how participants go about their job search activities. The results from this self reporting process will enable the researcher to work on a schedule for the indepth interviews to further understand these experiences and perceptions. The interviews will beaudio recorded with the participant's full consent. The results from the indepth qualitative interviews will be used to craft questions for the pre- and post-measure questionnaires to be completed by participant before and after the intervention stage. The 50 participants will be divided into a control and an experimental group of 25 participants each. The control group will receive normal services. The experimental group will receive a structured program to assist in obtaining employment. Structured observation will be conducted on both groups during the process of the intervention to gage the impact of intervention. The process will go for six months. Both groups will be interviewed during the intervention for their views on observed points. At the end of the intervention, both groups will do the quantitative post-test measure to gage an change in perceptions. The qualitative and quantitative data from all components of the study will be analysed independently. The qualitative data will be analysed using Discourse Analysis, the quantitative data will be analysed using descriptive statistics. The data will then be triangulated.