Review Article
Scoping review of instruments measuring attitudes toward disability

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dhjo.2016.01.008Get rights and content

Abstract

Background

Negative attitudes toward disability cause difficulties in integrating persons with disabilities (PWDs) into society and limit their access to health care, education, employment, and leisure. Being aware of societal attitudes toward disability may help explain discrimination against PWDs and draw attention to the solutions needed to address these. Good measures of attitudes are vital for this purpose.

Objective

The aim is to synthesize published information, including evidences on psychometric properties and overall utility on instruments that measure attitudes toward disability.

Methods

A two-tiered search process was performed to identify instruments that measure attitudes toward disability and retrieve articles that describe their development and/or validation. The CanChild Outcome Measures Rating Form was utilized to determine the overall utility of the instruments. Results were synthesized using a self-constructed data extraction form.

Results

Thirty-one instruments were included in the study. Five measured attitudes toward communication disability, 7 toward intellectual disability, 4 toward mental illness, and 15 toward disability in general. Target respondents ranged from children to adults, and included respondents from different occupations and cultural backgrounds. Twenty-three were found to have adequate overall utility, while 8 have poor overall utility.

Conclusion

Several instruments are available in literature and all may be used for their intended purposes as long as their limitations are considered. Many still require further validation to ascertain their validity and responsiveness to change.

Section snippets

Methods

This study is a review of existing data which was exempted from an ethics review. Instruments used to measure attitudes toward disability were mapped out through a systematic search and data extraction process. The characteristics and overall utility of each instrument were determined. For the purpose of this study, overall utility was based on the clinical utility, availability, reliability, validity, and responsiveness of the instrument to change.

A two-phased electronic search was done: the

Results and discussion

Phase I of the search process yielded 92 instruments. After Phase II, 31 instruments were included for review in the study. The other 61 were excluded either because they did not measure attitudes toward disability or because no supporting articles could be retrieved. Fig. 1 illustrates the results of the search processes. The included instruments were grouped depending on the type of disability they focused on, particularly: 1) communication disability; 2) intellectual disability; 3) mental

Conclusion

Researchers, clinicians, and other personnel who aim to understand societal attitudes toward disability need tools that are valid and easy to use. There are several tools available which may be used for their intended purposes. There are those which may be used for measuring attitudes toward intellectual disability, communication disability, or disability in general. There are those which are designed to measure attitudes of the general population, PWDs, adults, children, health professionals,

Acknowledgments

The authors express their gratitude to Alyssa Nicole Gratil, PTRP and Rachelle Legaspi, PTRP for their assistance in the data collection and initial write-up of the manuscript.

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    Disclosures: The authors have no conflict of interest to declare. This study was not funded by any third party, agency or institution.

    The abstract of the earlier version of this study was presented through a poster at the World Confederation for Physical Therapy Congress 2015 in Singapore last 2–5 May 2015 and was published in the WCPT Congress 2015 Abstracts supplement issue of the Physiotherapy journal: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.physio.2015.03.2082.

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