Researchers in the University of Connecticut’s Neag School of Education have published a new study that provides unique insights into how emotional well-being is evaluated among individuals with intellectual disabilities.

Emotional well-being has been connected to physical and mental health. Although researchers have become increasingly interested in measuring emotional well-being, the majority of studies focus on typically developing populations.

The authors found that there are significant gaps in how emotional well-being is measured in children and adolescents with intellectual disabilities, and few measures exist to assess emotional well-being for those with severe or profound intellectual disabilities.

One of the authors, Jessica Koslouski, assistant research professor in the Neag School of Education Department of Educational Psychology, explains, “In this study, we were particularly interested in how emotional well-being is measured for those needing more tailored approaches, such as individuals with intellectual disabilities. What we found is that, to date, emotional well-being has largely been measured as a subcomponent of quality of life in this population, meaning that very few questions focus on an individual’s emotional well-being.”

Emotional well-being encompasses how satisfied an individual feels in general and about life overall. It takes into consideration culture, life circumstances, available resources, and life stage. Everyday experiences as well as internal reflections on one’s life satisfaction, meaning, and pursuit of goals can impact emotional well-being.

Although previous studies have shown that emotional well-being is sometimes measured using anxiety or depression measures, Koslouski cautions against this.

“Existing research suggests that mental health disorders and emotional well-being can occur simultaneously,” says Koslouski. “In addition, the absence of mental health symptomology does not guarantee emotional well-being. Measuring emotional well-being helps us to assess any positive outcomes being generated by an intervention or environment, and gives us a positive benchmark to work towards.”

For individuals with intellectual disabilities, emotional well-being has been connected to positive social, emotional, behavioral, and health outcomes. Those with higher levels of emotional well-being are more likely to participate in fulfilling activities, cultivate meaningful relationships, and have stronger feelings of inclusion. Emotional well-being may also encourage resilience.

The study authors further explored what aspects of emotional well-being are assessed in individuals with intellectual disabilities. The majority of items assessing emotional well-being focused on the emotional quality of everyday experiences or life satisfaction. Very few items focused on the ability to pursue goals, which has been identified as a component of emotional well-being and connected to better long-term outcomes for individuals with intellectual disabilities.

“This raises an important question about the salience of various aspects of emotional well-being in the lives of individuals with intellectual disabilities. Is it that the ability to pursue goals is less influential on emotional well-being for this population, or is it that we have not yet focused our measurement on this aspect of emotional well-being,” explains Koslouski.

An important next step in research is to explore which aspects of emotional well-being are most relevant to individuals with intellectual disabilities.

Having tools to accurately measure emotional well-being will enable researchers to evaluate whether strategies supporting emotional well-being are effective. The measures identified in this study have been added to UConn’s Mechanisms Underlying Mind-Body Interventions and Measurement of Emotional Well-Being (M3EWB) network Emotional Well-Being Subjective Measures Repository.

This repository includes more than 100 measures to assess emotional well-being. A small subset of these measures is for individuals with intellectual disabilities, but the resource provides researchers and practitioners with valuable information on existing measures, including target population, cost, and number of items.

The study was published in the March 2025 issue of Research in Developmental Disabilities. In addition to Koslouski, authors on the study include Sophie Hall, a UConn doctoral candidate and graduate research assistant in educational psychology; Caroline Richter, assistant professor of psychology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and former UConn postdoctoral scholar under Fumiko Hoeft, UConn Waterbury campus director and professor of psychological sciences; and Sandra Chafouleas, Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of educational psychology and director of the Collaboratory on School and Child Health (CSCH).

It was completed as part of the National Institutes of Health grant that established the M3EWB network at UConn in 2021.

Chafouleas says, “This study is one example of what the M3EWB network is all about: filling knowledge gaps on emotional well-being, curating resources for measuring emotional well-being, and bringing together students, early career, and more senior researchers to advance the science of emotional well-being.”

Principal investigators leading UConn’s M3EWB network include Chafouleas; Hoeft, professor of psychological sciences and UConn Waterbury campus director; and Crystal Park, professor of psychological sciences and PI at UConn’s Institute for Collaboration on Health, Intervention, and Policy (InCHIP).

To encourage development of emotional well-being skills among UConn students, the M3EWB Network offered a one-credit course, Feeling Well: The Science and Practice of Emotional Well-Being during the Fall 2023 semester. The course was so popular it was offered again during the Spring 2024 semester, reaching more than 2,500 undergraduate and graduate students. The course focused on how the brain and body affect emotional well-being, external factors contributing to emotional well-being, and practices to enhance emotional well-being.

Additional information about the M3EWB Network is available at m3ewb.research.uconn.edu.