Rehabilitation Counseling Bulletin

Quality of life (QOL) has been one of the most commonly used constructs in the field of rehabilitation. More specifically, it has been viewed and studied as a process, measure, goal, and outcome in the domain of psychosocial adaptation to chronic illness and disability (CID). However, it has seldom been discussed in the contexts of community-level clinical interventive strategies or personal-level coping strategies. This article seeks to provide the reader with a better appreciation and understanding of (a) the temporal nature of QOL within both the community-level and personal-level contexts of interventions, (b) the temporal-oriented parallel nature of managing life stresses as viewed from both community- and personal-level perspectives, (c) the intricate nature of anticipating, managing, and coping with CID as viewed from three distinct temporal vantage points, and (d) the psychosocial benefits accrued from future-oriented, positively valenced, post-CID coping efforts and their salutary influence on QOL among people with CID. The article concludes with a brief review of several theoretical, clinical, and research implications, informed by the temporal nature of coping strategies and their effect on psychosocial adaptation to CID.

The present study was designed to provide information about the content of the advisory opinions provided by the Ethics Committee of the Commission on Rehabilitation Counselor Certification. Specifically, a content analysis was performed on all of the advisory opinions rendered between March 1996 and November 2013. NVivo10 was utilized to systematically inspect the content of the opinions and describe emerging patterns. Results from the study revealed that most of the advisory opinions addressed ethical standards related to the counseling relationship, confidentiality, resolving ethical issues, and professional responsibility. Implications for future education outreach initiatives and research directions are discussed.

The U.S. federal research agency’s (i.e., National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research [NIDRR], National Institutes of Health [NIH]) sponsored research capacity building (RCB) efforts in the field of disability, health, independent living, and rehabilitation have historically focused on individual research skill building activities (e.g., postdoctoral fellowships, advanced research methods and statistics courses, grant-writing workshops) as a main intervention to facilitate increased research productivity among investigators. However, investigators’ personal intrinsic attributes as well as federal research agency policy and systems context are rarely considered as research productivity facilitators. On trend, minority entity (ME) RCB efforts tend to focus on addressing a single challenge, research skill building, while oftentimes neglecting the importance of intrinsic factors and federal agency policy and systems context. The purpose of this review was to synthesize the available peer review and gray literature, and policy on factors that facilitate investigators’ research productivity. Recommendations for advancing the current state of the science on research productivity facilitators are presented.

Existing research has indicated an association between resilience and psychosocial adjustment to disability. The purpose of this study was to validate the Brief Resilience Scale (BRS) in a sample of vocational rehabilitation (VR) consumers. Participants were 277 individuals with disabilities receiving state VR services. Findings support the identification of two factors in the BRS, labeled succumbing and resilience by the researchers. The succumbing factor was positively associated with reporting of depression while the resilience factor was associated with well-being. Implications for practice in state VR agencies are provided.

The purposes of this study are (a) to explore how people with disabilities (PWD) experience differences in their quality of life (QOL) over the course of their lives, (b) to examine the effect of employment on QOL, and (c) to investigate the impact of age on overall QOL for PWD both inter- and intra-individually. To address these aims, this study used the data set for the Panel Survey of Employment for the Disabled (PSED) collected by the Korean Employment Agency for the Disabled (KEAD). The target populations of the study were 5,092 registered persons with disability. No longitudinal approach to examine the impact of employment and age on QOL for individuals with disabilities has been considered in the previous literature. Thus, multilevel modeling was used to examine the relationship between employment, age, and QOL for PWD. Results of this study indicated that employment status and age were significant predictors of QOL among PWD. These findings call attention for the need to consider the impact of employment and age on QOL of PWD both inter- and intra-individually.

Charles Tubre responded to a paralyzing injury at the age of 14 by becoming an accomplished disability rights advocate. His advocacy began when he was a college student at the University of New Orleans during the 1970s. In overcoming the barriers to his independence, he created community, legislative, and legal solutions to reduce the barriers for others with disabilities. He took the spirit of the independent living movement that began in Berkeley in the 1960s, and he pushed it forward across Louisiana. Working with every available resource and frequently with the Advocacy Center, Louisiana’s statewide protection and advocacy system, his persistent efforts were a major contribution to making accessible public transportation, centers for independent living, and funding for personal care attendant services a reality. He assisted in the accessible design of such public spaces as the National World War II Museum, the Morial Convention Center, Ogden Museum of Art, and the Aquarium of the Americas. He was an artist, bird watcher, music lover, and celebrant of all things New Orleans.