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).
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