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survey via Survey Monkey. At the end of the survey, each participant indicated
his or her willingness to continue in the two remaining phases of the study. Once
the participant opted in, the researcher emailed out the checklist link. Finally, the
researchers randomly selected five of the remaining participants for the virtual
interviews.

Surveys, Checklists, and Virtual Interviews
An electronic web link from Survey Monkey connected the participants to the Dr. Janna Brendle is
survey and checklist. Survey Monkey automatically generated a data analysis output Associate Professor of
that categorized the participants’ answers into percentages. The 1-hour interviews Special Education in the
College of Education at
took place on Zoom and were recorded through that platform to create reviewable Texas Tech University.
video recordings. The interviewer followed a protocol and took notes during the Brendle serves as program
interview. Notes from both the initial interviews as well as video recordings created coordinator, advisor,
a brief synopsis. The initial annotations were confirmed via the video recordings. and instructor in the
The researchers created a scenario-based survey using a similar format for each educational diagnostician,
circumstance. A researcher with expertise in the area of disability employment special education teacher
preparation and special
reviewed each scenario for validity. The participants read a short description of education doctoral
a potential employee and then rated their willingness to hire the individual. Each programs. Her research
scenario differed in that it represented a specific disability category, including a focuses on instructional
person with (a) a language disorder, (b) cerebral palsy, (c) Down syndrome, (d) an strategies and
autism spectrum disorder, and (e) no identified disability. The participants rated the intervention for students
likelihood of taking a specific action via a 5-point Likert-like scale, with 1 being with disabilities. janna.
brendle@ttu.edu
definitely unlikely and 5 being definitely likely. The prompts for the survey questions
appear in Appendix A. An open-ended comment section completed the survey.
The checklist consisted of 14 statements (Appendix B) commonly identified as
issues with the employability of individuals with disabilities. Participants indicated
whether they considered the statement to be true or false and why.
The questions for the virtual interview (Appendix C) generated a means for
gathering additional information about the participants’ perceptions concerning the
employment of individuals with IDD. Four questions formed the basis for the virtual
interview, but the participants provided all the additional information they cared to
impart.

Data Analysis
The first step of thematic analysis according to Clarke et al. (2019) is familiarization
with the data. Once all five virtual interviews were clearly transcribed, the thematic
analysis began. The researchers looked both for key words and phrases as well as
for meaningful quotes from participants that appeared to identify each participant’s
thoughts about hiring individuals with IDD. The researchers initially coded each
data set independently before collating the data as a whole. Triangulating the data
involved highlighting key sections in and across each data set to begin to identify
descriptive themes. Using the established codes, the researchers then began to look
for patterns, which ultimately emerged as the over-arching themes. The researchers
reviewed the themes for accuracy and defined and named them accordingly.

Trustworthiness and Transferability
Research studies should clearly provide evidence of the trustworthiness of the
endeavor through a variety of strategies. For this study, credibility emerged in four
manners. First, the researchers acknowledged their personal views and feelings

Educators’ Choice 17