A scale for the measurement of attitudes toward physically disabled adults

The ATDPs have been the instruments most commonly used for the measurement of attitudes toward disabled persons. However, it has become increasingly apparent that these scales have serious shortcomings and that a new scale is due. A New Scale was developed for the purpose of measuring attitudes towards permanently and seriously physically disabled adults. The subjects used for the development of this scale consisted of students studying for a Bachelor of Science degree in physiotherapy. The scale has 50 scored statements and 25 interest statements. The scored statements were created so that they could not be answered on the basis of factual knowledge, and would be difficult to answer on the basis of remembered experience and reasonable argument. The interest statements did not contribute to the subject's score and were included for the purpose of keeping the subject's interest in responding to all the statements on the scale. A psychometric analysis of the 50 scored statements demonstrated that the New Scale has excellent discriminative ability, internal consistency, and reliability, good validity, and that the influence of agreement response and social desirability is minimal. In addition it is believed that the New Scale has a high degree of unidimensionality.