External Perspectives of Intellectually Inter-Abled Romantic Relationships

Abstract

This study qualitatively explored participant’s thoughts, opinions, and attitudes regarding intellectually inter-abled romantic relationships. An intellectually inter-abled romantic relationship is a romantic relationship where one partner has an intellectual disability, and the other partner does not. Eleven participants individually participated in one in-person interview with a median length of 37 minutes. These interviews consisted of open-ended questions based on an interview guide created by the researcher which sought out the participant’s thoughts, opinions, and attitudes regarding intellectually inter-abled relationships. This guide can be found in Appendix A. This data was analyzed using grounded theory analysis, which is an inductive approach with a goal of categorizing the data into themes and creating a substantive theory based on the data set. The themes that emerged were societal judgment, taking advantage, amplified struggles and solutions, put like and like together, and who am I to judge; love is love. The substantive theory that arose from the data is as follows: Generation Z college students are generally accepting of intellectually inter-abled romantic relationships as long as the person with the intellectual disability can undoubtedly give true informed consent and is not being taken advantage of.