How Science Can Evaluate and Enhance Person-Centered Planning

Abstract

This article argues that the popular, but at times, misapplied approaches of person-centered planning can be remedied through scientific practices. Person-centered planning is described in the context of an evolving disabilities culture that is selecting practices that achieve the values of the new paradigm. Operationalizing outcomes that constitute aspects of quality of life (QOL) can be challenging, but the main obstacle to an empirical analysis of person-centered planning appears to be reliable implementation of its complex process. Resolution of these problems is seen as a cutting edge for expanding our applied research technology in assisting people with disabilities achieve the values to which they aspire.