Perfil de Laura E. Gómez
I am an Assistant Professor at the University of Oviedo since 2011, but I previously worked at the University of Salamanca and the University of Valladolid. I am also member of the Institute on Community Integration (INICO) (University of Salamanca). My research and teaching activities are focused on the development, calibration, adaptation and validation of psychological and educational measurement instruments focused on disability and quality of life, supports and adaptive behavior. I have coauthored (together with Miguel Angel Verdugo, Benito Arias, and Robert L. Schalock) several quality of life assessment instruments (e.g., the INTEGRAL Scale, the GENCAT Scale, the FUMAT Scale, the San Martín Scale, and the INICO-FEAPS Scale), and peer-reviewed papers. I have made more than a hundred contributions to international conferences. One of our main works was the development of the GENCAT Scale, whose validation and calibration was the object of my PhD and an international award for researchers in 2010. This scale is the most applied in our country in social services at present to assess quality of life of persons with intellectual disabilities, elderly people, persons with mental health problems, people with drug dependences, people with HIV/AIDS, and people with physical disabilities. Actually, this tool has been recently applied to more than 11,000 persons in the Catalonian county to develop providers’ profiles. In this way, different organizations may compare their results, in terms of quality of life-related personal outcomes, with results obtained by others with similar characteristics and by other diagnosis groups. Results are being used to enhance quality of life-related personal outcomes, but also to improve the quality of their services. Social policies may be also influenced by results obtained in this county.
