Attitude Toward Disabled Persons Scale

The Attitudes Toward Disabled Person Scale (ATDP) was developed following the need for an objective and reliable instrument to measure attitudes toward disabled persons as a group (Yuker et al, 1970). This is the most widely used research tool developed by Yuker, Block and Young (1970) in measuring attitudes toward persons with disabilities (Lyons, 1990; Alghazo, 2002; Yuker and Block, 1986, in Kitchen, 2007). The ATDP measures attitudes at the societal level and extent of perceived differences between disabled and nondisabled people, with a positive attitude reflected in perception of few differences (Gething, 1994). On the ATDP form O, the preferred version which includes 20 items in a Likert format, reliability is .83 on a test-retest within 5 weeks, 4 – 16 month test-retest is .68; split-half is .80, and alpha is .76 (White et al., 2006). Validity of the ATDP is acceptably high, using several approaches including content, predictive, concurrent, and construct validity (White et al., 2006). The instrument published by the Human Resources Center can be accessed free through Education Resources Information Center website (http://www.eric.ed.gov).

The ATDP may be administered as either an individual or a group test. The test covers items to which the subject responds by indicating the extent of his agreement or disagreement to each according to the following scale: (+3=I agree very much; +2=I agree pretty much; +1=I agree a little; 1=I disagree a little; -2=I disagree pretty much; and -3=I disagree very much).

ATDP scores may be interpreted as reflecting either the subject's perceiving persons with disabilities as basically the same as or different from persons without disability. A high score indicates the idea that persons with disabilities are similar to persons without disabilities; while a low score indicates the view of difference between persons with disabilities and those without disabilities. The view of differences in characteristics and treatment of persons with disabilities might be interpreted as rejection or prejudice, considering them "inferior" or "disadvantaged”. At the same time, the scale may show the degree of positive and negative stereotypy in the attitudes of persons without disabilities toward those who have disabilities (Yuker et al, 1970).

ATDP, like most attitude scales, is thought to measure the affective and cognitive aspects of attitudes. One of the many strengths of this instrument however, is that it also appears to be capable of measuring behavioral tendencies, since it inquires how people should act toward persons with disabilities (Haskell, 2010).