Results of the Vote on the Name Change

The members of the American Association on Mental Retardation have voted to:
1) change the name of the organization, and
2) adopt “American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities” as the new name.

This change will not alter the mission of the organization but will rather bring the name more in line with general usage in the field and with the day to day work of our members. Stay tuned for more information about the implications of this exciting change over the next several months as we move to implement the name change through all of our activities.

The results of the membership vote on the issue of changing the name of the American Association on Mental Retardation were conclusive. A total of 1627 ballots were received.

On the first question of whether or not to change the name, an impressive 85% of voters were in favor of a name change.
in favor	1329
against	270
marked un clearly	28

 

For the second question on the ballot, members were asked to rank three proposed new names. Initially, first choices were tallied and results were:
American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities:	649 (49%)
American Association on Developmental Disabilities:	482 (37%)
American Association on Intellectual Disability:	190 (14%)

While there seemed to be a clear preference at this point, no choice received an absolute majority. Therefore, following the Ware procedure of counting ballots, an additional tally was made that considered the second choice of voters having “American Association on Intellectual Disability” as their first choice and eliminating this name from further consideration.
(Note that some of these voters did not provide a second choice, as was their option).

This produced:

American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities:	723 (58.5%)
American Association on Developmental Disabilities:	513 (41.5%)