Development and validation of the Physical Disability Identity Scale: A multistudy quantitative investigation with...

Disability has traditionally been viewed as a deficit in psychology research; however, accruing work suggests that viewing disability as an identity may be protective for mental health and well-being among disabled individuals. Therefore, developing disability identity measures that comprehensively capture this view of disability as an identity is an important step for promoting disabled individuals' flourishing.

To address this, we conducted two studies aimed at developing and validating a new scale to measure physical disability identity among adults with physical disability. In Study 1 (N = 104), we solicited feedback on our new scale from adults with physical disabilities and revised our scale to ensure that it captured their lived experiences. In Study 2 (N = 296), we tested the factor structure of the new Physical Disability Identity Scale. All data were collected in 2023.

Most participants reported that our scale was easy to comprehend and comprehensively captured their lived experiences. We found evidence for a six-factor structure of the new Physical Disability Identity Scale, which assessed the following dimensions: Connection, Satisfaction, Centrality, Openness, Individual Self-Stereotyping, and Disability Lens. In addition, results suggested that Connection, Satisfaction, and Openness were adaptively related to well-being and health, whereas Centrality, Individual Self-Stereotyping, and Disability Lens were mostly adversely related to well-being and health.

This research suggests that our Physical Disability Identity Scale is valid among adults with physical disabilities and that physical disability identity dimensions may be valuable to consider in future work on well-being and health among individuals with physical disabilities. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).