This portfolio thesis has three parts.

The first part is a systematic literature review, in which the theoretical, conceptual and empirical literature relating to care-staff perceptions of challenging behaviour in people with learning disabilities is reviewed. It aims to present an outline of a wide variety of factors that can affect how care-staff think about the challenging behaviour of their clients.

Part two is an empirical paper, which explores the effect the diagnostic label autism has on the perceptions of challenging behaviour that care-staff, who work in learning disability services, hold. To achieve this, four different vignettes and a number of questionnaires were used to assess cognitive and emotional reactions to people who have been diagnosed with autism, or a learning disability. This study also used the data collected to test the concurrent validity of two new questionnaires, the Challenging Behaviour Perceptions Questionnaire and the Challenging Behaviour Representations Questionnaire.

Part three is the appendices, which include various relevant materials that are reproduced, a reflective statement on the process of completing this portfolio plus additional information.