A review of employment outcome measures in vocational research involving adults with neurodevelopmental disabilities

BACKGROUND: Adults with neurodevelopmental disability (NDD) have poor employment outcomes when compared to their peers without disabilities. Examining employment outcomes beyond common dichotomous descriptive metrics (i.e., employed versus unemployed) depends on the use of standard measures and structured procedures. OBJECTIVE: This review of vocational research literature focused on identifying measures of employment outcomes for adults with NDD. METHODS: Searches were conducted across five databases - ERIC, MEDLINE, CINAHL, HaPI, and PsycINFO. Screening was conducted in duplicate, with all disagreements adjudicated by the senior researcher. RESULTS: A total of 45 articles met inclusion criteria, and data extraction revealed that 64 different employment measures were used in these vocational research studies. CONCLUSIONS: This work summarizes the employment measures for people with NDD utilized in the literature. Descriptions of these measures were provided and coding by person and environment themes, which is a useful resource for planning future vocational research for people with NDD.