School of Social Work, Indiana University, Indianapolis, IN, USA.
J Intellect Disabil Res. 2020 Sep;64(9):681-689. doi: 10.1111/jir.12766. Epub 2020 Jul 22.
Direct support professionals (DSPs) support people with intellectual and developmental disabilities in activities of daily living. DSPs may experience both contentment and struggles with their work. As agencies grapple with their recruitment and retention, understanding DSPs' holistic work experience is important. The Professional Quality of Life (ProQOL) scale assesses multiple domains of work experiences (i.e. compassion satisfaction, burnout and secondary traumatic stress). Despite extensive use across helping professions, the ProQOL is largely absent from DSP research.
This study examined the factor structure of the ProQOL with DSPs. Using secondary data from 495 DSPs, confirmatory factor analysis was conducted to determine if the original three-factor structure holds for this population.
We confirmed the factorial validity of the ProQOL with the three-factor solution. In the validation process, some modifications were suggested to the model, which also improved the scale reliability.
The current study provides initial evidence of the factorial validity of the ProQOL when used with DSPs, as well as recommendations for subsequent improvements and future research.
直接支持专业人员（DSP）在日常生活活动中为智力和发育障碍者提供支持。DSP 可能在工作中既感到满足，也感到挣扎。随着机构努力解决招聘和留用问题，了解 DSP 的整体工作体验非常重要。专业生活质量（ProQOL）量表评估工作体验的多个领域（即同情满足、倦怠和二次创伤压力）。尽管在帮助专业中广泛使用，但 ProQOL 在 DSP 研究中基本缺失。
本研究使用来自 495 名 DSP 的二次数据，检验了 ProQOL 的因素结构，以确定该人群是否存在最初的三因素结构。
我们通过三因素解决方案验证了 ProQOL 的因子有效性。在验证过程中，对模型提出了一些修改建议，这也提高了量表的可靠性。
本研究为 ProQOL 在 DSP 中使用的因子有效性提供了初步证据，并为后续改进和未来研究提出了建议。
