Institutional contexts structure wellbeing-relevant psychosocial opportunities in residential disability services: a national documentary analysis in Romania

Positive psychology increasingly recognizes that wellbeing depends on meaningful social and organizational contexts, yet residential disability services are rarely examined as environments that structure the practical opportunities through which autonomy, competence, relatedness, agency, and social inclusion can develop. We conducted a directed documentary content analysis of the complete eligible 2025 corpus of official Romanian monitoring reports on residential services for adults with disabilities: 54 reports representing 67 services. A 31-code framework covered agency, belonging, capability development, community participation, and institutional mechanisms. Each report-code combination was classified as Enabling, Restrictive, Mixed, or Not reported, with original-page verification, negative-case analysis, an exhaustive second consistency pass, and sensitivity analyses for cluster and thematic reports. Across 1,674 report-code combinations, 1,410 contained directional evidence: 334 Enabling, 560 Restrictive, and 516 Mixed. Freedom of movement was the clearest structural discriminator. Formal procedures frequently exceeded evidence of usable agency; positive staff relationships coexisted with structural restrictions; organized community outings were more common than independent mobility or reciprocal membership; education and employment opportunities were limited; and administrative relocation was not equivalent to resident-led deinstitutionalization. Small scale and community location were therefore insufficient by themselves. Residential services functioned as psychosocial opportunity structures: wellbeing-relevant conditions depended less on service labels than on whether organizational resources were converted into resident-controlled opportunities for choice, movement, relationships, competence, valued social roles, and community living.