Development of decision support system to provide occupational therapy service during transition periods for students with disabilities

Abstract

The occupational therapy (OT) service has not only operated in hospital-based settings, but also been extended to school-based ones. School-based occupational therapists (SBOTs) work as health professionals in an educational team in special education schools. During transition periods, they provide a transition service, and encourage students with disabilities to meet their goals and become potential learners. The purposes of this research were to study a situation of OT service during transition periods for students with disabilities in special education schools and to develop the decision support system (DSS) to provide OT service during transition periods for students with disabilities. This study was based on the Research and Development (R&D) design with mixed qualitative and quantitative research methods. There were two phases of this study. In terms of Phase I, the participants comprised six SBOTs in special education schools in Chiang Mai province, Thailand. The research instrument consisted of semi-structured interviews with open-ended questions. Thematic analysis was conducted in steps of data analysis. The results found ten categories in four themes as follows. The first theme of roles and involvement of occupational therapists (OTs) had two categories: formal roles and involvement, and informal collaboration. The second theme of OT service for transition had two categories: types of intervention programs and timing in providing the OT service. The third theme of barriers against providing the transition service had four categories: informal school policies on the transition service, OT workloads, differences in the background and perspectives of school professionals, and parental involvement. The fourth theme of opinions to decrease the barriers had two categories: explicit educational policies and use of technology as tools for involvement and collaboration. In terms of Phase II, there were 2 main steps. The first step was exploring the needs of SBOTs regarding DSS development. Six SBOTs from Phase I were recruited for their opinions by in-depth interview with semi-structured questions. Probe questions were open-ended and focused on the topic of the DSS providing OT service for students with disabilities during transition periods. Content analysis was conducted in steps of data analysis. Results found 3 types of the current support system such as a specific educational technology (SET) program, free cloud-based storage service, and manual report form. The web-based DSS was designed by needs that could be explained regarding content and function. In terms of content, 2 main parts of the DSS included personal and OT service information. In terms of functions, 3 main functions were syncing information from the SET program, making decisions in OT intervention programs and sharing OT service information. In the second step, the participants comprised 18 SBOTs and 18 teachers, who worked together in providing educational programs for students with disabilities at 14 special education schools in Thailand. They tried out the web-based DSS for 3 cases within 8 weeks. The System Usability Scale (SUS) was used for investigating efficiency of the web-based DSS. The result revealed that the SUS score of the web-based DSS was 72.98, which indicated good usability. These findings provided SBOTs and school professionals with fundamental information for encouraging students with disabilities to become potential learners during transition periods. Moreover, the web-based DSS could be a collaborative tool, which supports sharing student information between SBOTs and teachers, in order to plan Individualized Transition Planning (ITP) in the school context. Besides, the web-based DSS was meant to support decision-making of the SBOTs in providing OT intervention for students with disabilities during transition periods.