Examining the effectiveness of safety skills instruction program towards the individuals with intellectual disabilities

The purpose of this study is developing a valid and reliable assessment tool in assessment of safety skills of individuals with intellectual disabilities, examining the effectiveness of Safety Skills Instruction Program in teaching safety skills to these individuals, determining the preservation of skills after instruction by observation and determining the views of parents and students respecting teaching of safety skills. This research is designed in explanatory sequential design, which is one of the mixed research methods. In the development process of Safety Skills Test, consequence of examination of construct validity by item difficulty and distinctiveness parameters, exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, it is determined that the assessment tool has a structure of four factors. The factors are named as Accidents, First Aid, Personal Safety and Emergency Numbers. Mann Whitney U and Wilcoxon signed-rank tests are used to comparing the scores of students in experimental and control groups in the stage of intervention. A significant difference was found in the safety skill levels of the students who have attended and who have not attended the intervention. It is determined that the level of safety skills of the students with mild intellectual disabilities who have attended the instruction is higher than the ones who have not attended according to mean ranks. When the mean ranks of difference scores and sums obtained by the Wilcoxon signed-rank test are considered, it is seen that the difference observed is in countenance of positive ranks, in other words the scores of the posttest. It is found that safety skills of students are preserved at the rate of 85,85% according the to the observation data gathered one week later. It is found that students and parents feel pleased about the instruction and think that the skills have been learnt to a large extent according to the result of interview data.