The Texas Statewide Youth Leadership Forum (TXYLF) provides self-advocacy training to high school youths with disabilities. TXYLF is an enhanced version of the Youth Leadership Forum (YLF) that is comprised of an initial five day training, a nine month support phase, regional YLFs, and the opportunity for participants to return to the five day training to serve as a mentor to their peers. This study’s purpose was to examine the TXYLF participants’ post-training outcomes and the relationships among advocacy involvement and adult outcomes. To achieve this purpose, former TXYLF participants were surveyed between one and six years after their participation in TXYLF. The correlational study analyzed descriptively the participants’ outcomes and inferentially, through logistic regression, the relationships among participants’ adult outcomes, self-advocacy involvement, and the various TXYLF participation components. The results demonstrated that TXYLF participants’ post-training postsecondary education attendance was higher than the national average for adults with disabilities. Participants with low incidence disabilities were involved in inclusive employment more often than the national average. A minority status increased the likelihood of involvement in secondary education advocacy, having a high incident disability increased the likelihood of post-training employment, and being under 21 years old increased the likelihood of living independently post-training, involvement in postsecondary education advocacy, and involvement in employment advocacy. Involvement in TXYLF for one full year, including involvement as a mentor, increased the likelihood of post-training employment; involvement in TXYLF’s nine month support phase and involvement as a mentor increased the likelihood of post-training postsecondary education attendance, postsecondary education advocacy, and employment advocacy. Attending a regional YLF further increased the likelihood of postsecondary education and postsecondary education advocacy. Furthermore, involvement in TXYLF as a mentor increased the likelihood of post-training employment, postsecondary education, and independent living. No significant relationships were observed for self-advocacy and adult-outcomes. Future research is needed that takes the findings of this study and establishes a causal relationship through a randomized group experimental design.

AIMS: This study investigated the perception of generic and disease-specific Health-Related Quality of Life (HRQoL) for adults living with hearing impairment (HI) in Aotearoa/New Zealand (NZ). This study aimed to answer three questions: (1) What is the perception of HRQoL amongst adults with hearing impairment in NZ? (2) How do these perceptions compare to adults with HI living in other countries for which we have data? (3) What are the demographic and audiometric variables related to device ownership? METHOD: HRQoL, demographic, and audiometric information was collected from 126 adults in NZ. The following demographic information was collected: age, relationship length, hours worked per week, income, ancestry, sex, level of education, city size, and sexual orientation. The following audiologic information was also collected: ownership of hearing aids (HA), ownership of hearing assistance technology (HAT), better-ear pure-tone average (BEPTA), worse-ear pure-tone average (WEPTA), and signal-to-noise ratio loss (SNR loss). HRQoL information was collected using the Medical Outcomes Study 36-Item Short-Form Health Survey (SF-36; Ware & Sherbourne, 1992), and the Hearing Handicap Inventory (HHI) for both elderly (HHIE) and adults (HHIA; Ventry & Weinstein, 1982; Newman, Weinstein, Jacobson, & Hug, 1991). Variables discriminating HA and HAT owners from non-owners were also analysed. RESULTS: The relationship between demographic variables and HRQoL scores revealed that only age and income were significant. Audiometric variables had significant relationships with disease-specific HRQoL scores, as well as HA and HAT ownership. Finally, disease-specific HRQoL scores and all audiometric variables differentiated HA owners from non- owners, but demographic variables did not. Generic HRQoL scores and all audiometric variables differentiated HAT owners from non-owners. CONCLUSIONS: These results suggest that the negative impacts of HI on HRQoL as reported overseas are also present in NZ, and that not only do audiometric variables including SNR loss are related to HRQoL, but HRQoL is a significant predictor for HA and HAT ownership. Further QoL research is warranted amongst the HI population in NZ to identify and understand any causal relationships present amongst these variables. Furthermore, HRQoL instruments and a test of speech understanding in noise have been shown to provide additional meaningful information, and therefore clinicians might consider including them during consultation.