Quality of Life in Students With Special Needs: Relevance to Bullying, Social Support and Inclusive Education

ABSTRACT Students who have special needs, experience various psychosocial problems that may affect their quality of life (QoL). Understanding these issues is vital to developing inclusive practices that promote well‐being, especially for learners from diverse cultural and underrepresented backgrounds. The purpose of this study was to identify psychosocial factors affecting the QoL of students with special needs in the West and non‐Western contexts. Using the framework of Arksey and O'Malley, further refined by Levac et al. and the JBI Manual for Evidence Synthesis, a scoping review was undertaken on Google Scholar, PubMed and PsycINFO. Eighty‐two records were included out of 114 identified records. The outcome of the thematic analysis showed that QoL is affected by five main psychosocial domains (i.e., bullying, self‐determination, social support, inclusive education and stigma). These factors were discovered to either improve or decrease students' quality of life. The study shows how essential policies of inclusion, emotional support and self‐determination are. It highlights the negative effects of bullying and stigma. Coming studies should consider non‐Western inclusive education practices using contextualised Quality of Life measures.