The Impact of Vocational Rehabilitation Services and Demographic Factors Towards the Successful Employment Outcomes Among Hard-of-Hearing Individuals

Document Type

Conference Proceeding

Publication Date

2019

Abstract

Hard-of-hearing (HoH) individuals are encouraged to utilize the numerous vocational rehabilitation services provided by the state-federal vocational rehabilitation (VR) services to enhance their quality of life and employment opportunities. Despite the importance of these services, limited studies have been conducted to identify the most meaningful VR services for the HoH population. This cross-sectional retrospective study on 24,983 evaluated consumers with and without successful employment outcome who were drawn from the U.S. Department of Education Rehabilitation Service Administration Case Service Report for the Fiscal Year 2014. The main goal of this study was to assess the impact of existing VR services in achieving a successful employment outcome. Additionally, we evaluated the effect of various demographic factors (gender, race and ethnicity, age, level of education, and secondary disability) on obtaining a successful employment outcome. Chi-square Automatic Interaction Detector (CHAID) and Logistic regression were used to analyze the data. Among all consumers, 69.7% of HoH consumers reached successful employment outcomes. The most significant VR services related to successful employment outcomes included assessment, diagnosis, and treatment of impairments, rehabilitation technology, vocational rehabilitation counseling and guidance, information and referral services, job placement assistance, job search assistance, transportation, maintenance, and other services.

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