Development and Validation of the Social Worker’s Attitudes Toward Disability Scale.

ATTITUDE (Psychology); CHI-squared test; STATISTICAL correlation; DISCRIMINANT analysis; EXPERIMENTAL design; FACTOR analysis; RESEARCH methodology; MEDICAL personnel; RESEARCH evaluation; SELF-esteem testing; SOCIAL work education; SOCIAL workers; STATISTICS; JUDGMENT sampling; MULTITRAIT multimethod techniques; RESEARCH methodology evaluation; DATA analysis software; ATTITUDES toward disabilities

Disability scholars have recently highlighted social work professional organizations’ lagging pace in adopting disability advocacy within diversity agendas and have questioned the adequacy of disability content within accredited social work curricula. Amid growing concerns, measures to assess attitudes of social workers toward disability and disability-related issues are needed. Using a sample of 237 social work students, the current study details the development and validation of the Social Worker’s Attitudes Toward Disability Scale, a multidimensional measure of social workers’ attitudes toward disability as related to professional roles. Initial findings indicate that the final 27-item instrument is a reliable and valid tool that may be useful in facilitating analyses of whether and how social workers are prepared to serve these vulnerable populations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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