Validation of the Multiple Disability Multidimensional Attitudes Scale Toward Persons With Disabilities

• Published in: Rehabilitation psychology 2023-05, Vol.68 (2), p.194-203
• Main Authors: Park, Jinhee, Levine, Allison, Kuo, Hung Jen, Lee, Beatrice, Beymer, Patrick N.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Attitude; Attitude Measures; Autism Spectrum Disorder; Autism Spectrum Disorders; Confirmatory Factor Analysis; Disabled Persons; Female; Human; Humans; Male; Multiple Disabilities; Psychometrics; Reproducibility of Results; Surveys and Questionnaires; Test Reliability; Test Validity
• ISSN: 0090-5550; 1939-1544
• DOI: 10.1037/rep0000494

Purpose/Objective: This study investigated the psychometric properties of a Multiple Disability Multidimensional Attitudes Scale Toward Persons with Disabilities (MD-MAS), focusing on four types of disabilities: anxiety disorder, autism spectrum disorder (ASD), blindness, and schizophrenia. We developed new vignettes describing the situation of interacting with an individual with each type of disability. Research Method/Design: We recruited 991 participants from a crowdsourcing data collection tool (i.e., Prolific). Participants were randomly assigned to one of four online surveys depending on the disability type. Five MAS models were selected from the previous literature to conduct confirmatory factor analyses (CFA). Results: CFA supported the German model of MAS with a four-factor structure (i.e., calm, negative affect, positive cognition, behavioral avoidance) as a good fit for the MD-MAS for four disability types. High internal consistency was found for four subscales across the disability types. Conclusions/Implications: This study modified the original MAS to assess attitudes toward persons with different types of disabilities. The adequate reliability and fit of the factor structure of the MD-MAS same across the four disability types allow researchers to compare attitudes based on disability types. This will provide significant implications for research and practice in understanding the nature of different attitudes by disability types. Impact and Implications This article validated the Multiple Disability Multidimensional Attitudes Scale (MD-MAS), specifically designed to assess attitudes toward people with four disability types (anxiety disorder, autism spectrum disorder, blindness, and schizophrenia). Results demonstrated that MD-MAS shows good psychometric properties and uses the same factor structure across four types of disabilities. Our data suggest that the structure of the MD-MAS can be tested for other disability types. The MD-MAS can be used to evaluate different attitudes across disability types, allowing a better understanding of the nature of attitudes toward disability.