Whilst there has been an increasing interest in developing measures of quality of life for people with learning disabilities, there has been little research looking specifically at the experiences of women with learning disabilities aged 40 years or older.

This study set out to look at this specific group and to do this, worked with 55 women from Sydney, Australia, and Prague, Czech Republic,

The researchers completed a semi-structured interview with each participant and with grounded theory, indentified a series of themes common across all the women involved.

The single most important theme that emerged from the analysis of the transcripts was the perception of the women relating to lack of control over their lives.

The authors conclude from this small study that their findings reinforce previous results relating to lack of control and suggest that their results “further the call for people with intellectual disabilities to be provided the opportunity to participate in decisions about their life choices.”

Subjective Quality of Life of Women with Intellectual Disabilities: The Role of Perceived Control over their Own Life in Self-determined Behaviour, Strnadová, I. & Evans, D. in  Journal of Applied Research in Intellectual Disabilities, 25: 71–79.