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The importance of disability representation to address implicit bias in the workplace
Daniel W Derbyshire1, Anne E Spencer2, Brit Grosskopf3
1European Centre for Environment and Human Health, University of Exeter, Exeter, United Kingdom.
Introduction:
People are disabled by barriers in society, not by their impairment. Barriers can be physical or be caused by people's implicit and explicit attitudes towards people with disabilities.
Methods:
We utilise the Implicit Association Test to investigate implicit attitudes towards people with disabilities among Human Resource professionals and people involved in making hiring decisions.
Results:
We find no significant differences between people who work for large companies or Small- to Medium-sized Enterprises. Similarly, working in Human Resources (or making recruitment decisions) has no effect on implicit bias. We supply the first evidence linking a person's own health status (measured using EQ-5D-5L) to their implicit bias. We find that a worse health status is associated with lower implicit bias towards people with disabilities. In addition, we find women have lower implicit bias than men.
Discussion:
The discussion reflects on the need for greater disability representation within the workplace - especially in making hiring decisions.
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