Measuring and reducing acquiescence in vocational profiling procedures for first time job-seekers with mental retardation

Abstract

Discourse analysts have shown that interview interactions between staff and people with mental retardation are especially subject to problems of 'acquiescence'. The interviewer's interactional dominance as well as the way questions are phrased and sequenced on questionnaires have been shown to encourage potentially acquiescent behaviours. These observations imply a need to develop procedures for measuring the extent of this phenomenon during vocational profiling conducted by job coaches and for finding effective methods for its reduction. Kilsby and Beyer (2002) demonstrated how a self-determination package could be used by job-coaches to reduce the incidence of question formats most associated with producing acquiescent responses during job selection interviews. However, the quantitative method of coding the type and frequency of the questions asked by job-coaches does not provide conclusive evidence that job-seekers' acquiescence was actually reduced. This paper aims to highlight the problems of acquiescence in supported employment by using the insights gained from fine-grained interactional analysis using a sample of the first time job-seekers from the Kilsby and Beyer study. Results indicate that the interventions did indeed reduce the occurrence of potentially acquiescent responses on the part of job-seekers, thus adding validity to the observational data and suggesting effective ways forward for practice and research.