Background. Intellectual function limitation of the intellectually-disabled children has impacts on their ability to apply their daily living skills. Daily living skills are basic ones needed to do daily activities so that children can cope with their environments. Daily living skills need training and developing by parents for their intellectually-disabled children. One of the basic daily living skills that needs to be developed for intellectually-disabled children is dressing skill. However, based on the pilot research and background study conducted in 6 special-needs schools in Yogyakarta, it was found that intellectually-disabled children were lack of the ability in dressing skill. Mother of the intellectually-disabled children very often assisted them to put on their dresses. Their mothers were often reluctant to train them and provide chances for their children to put on their attires appropriately by themselves due to the lack of information and reference on the ways to train appropriate dressing. In effect, the children became less independent and got accustomed to requiring assistance to apply the daily living skills. Based on the background study, it was indicated that parents were in a need of having an applicative guide book containing information to teach daily living skills for intellectually-disabled children. AMAN or Anak MAndiri berpakaiaN is a guide book containing ways and steps to teach dressing skills which is expected to be used by parents. The material in the guidebook is focused on two parts of the dressing skill, namely putting on the dress/shirt and the buttons. Behavioral modification  technique was used to create the steps of teaching dressing skills in this guide book. There are some guide books or self-learning guides in various media potentially used by parents; however they are not yet validated and ethically standardized. The aims of the study were to validate AMAN guide book and conduct empirical study in order to find the knowledge differences of parents in teaching dressing skills for intellectually-disabled children.

Methods. The validating process of the book was done by applying content validity test and implementation of the guide book by parents to their intellectually-disabled children. Content validity test was applied by using professional judgment involving 7 expert panelists who scored the contents of the guide book. Implementation of the guide book was studied by applying quasi experiment method with one group pretest posttest design.  The subjects in this study were 15 mothers of the intellectually-disabled children who fulfilled the criteria set in the study and were willing to follow the process in the study. The analysis of the data about the subjects’ knowledge of the AMAN guide book was empirically done by applying Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test.

Result. The findings indicated that the AMAN guide book had a significant content validity with V values ranging from 0,71 to 0,91 on each aspect of its content. The guide book AMAN potentially increased the parents’ knowledge in training dressing skills to intellectually disabled children with z value of -3,205 (p<0,05).

Conclusion. Based on the results, it was concluded that the AMAN guide book was verified as valid in terms of its contents and the AMAN guide book can be used to increase knowledge to teach dressing skills by parents to intellectually-disabled children.

Added Value. The implications of the study are to contribute in the development of educational psychology knowledge and elaborate the techniques and media used in teaching dressing skills for intellectually-disabled children. By the end of the research, a verified and content-validated guide book that is intended to use as an information source for parents to train dressing skills for intellectually-disabled children was produced and adjusted with the needs and characteristics of the children. Chaining as one of the behavioral modification techniques was used to show the steps to teach dressing skills. In order to comprehend the guide book, parents are able to be self-learning by reading the book according to their time and place. The language and illustrations used in the book were also made clear and easy to understand in order to facilitate the teaching and learning process by reading the book.

Keywords: guide book,  intellectual disability, daily living skills, dressing skills, parents

World Count: 686