An integrative conceptual framework of disability: New directions for research.

Advances in research on disability and rehabilitation are essential to creating equal opportunity, economic self-sufficiency, and full participation for persons with disabilities. Historically, such initiatives have focused on separate and specific areas, including neuroscience, molecular biology and genetics, gerontology, engineering and physical sciences, and social and behavioral sciences. Research on persons with disabilities should examine the broader context and trends of society that affect the total environment of persons with disabilities. This article examines the various disability paradigms across time, assessing the relative contribution of the socioecological perspective in guiding research designed to improve the lives of persons with disabilities. The authors recommend new research directions that include a focus on life span issues, biomedicine, biotechnology, the efficacy and effectiveness of current interventions, an emphasis on consumer-driven investigations within a socioecological perspective of disability, and the implications for research and practice. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Life satisfaction of people with physical disabilities: Relationship to personal assistance, disability status, and handicap.

Investigated 3 possible moderating factors associated with physical disabilities and with life satisfaction, including level of disability, level of handicap, and self-appraised adequacy of personal assistance. 45 persons with various physical disabilities who use personal assistance were given the Life Satisfaction Index Form A, selected subscales from the Arthritis Impact Measurement Scale, the Craig Handicap Assessment and Report Technique, and a 19-item measure of personal assistance satisfaction. There were significant positive correlations between life satisfaction and both handicap and personal assistance satisfaction. Life satisfaction and degree of disability were not significantly correlated. There was no interaction between disability and personal assistance satisfaction with respect to either life satisfaction or handicap. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Diversity beliefs as a mediator to faculty attitudes toward students with disabilities.

A survey of a sample of faculty (N = 201) at a large, public university located in the Southwest was conducted to investigate whether differences in faculty attitudes toward diversity positively mediate faculty attitudes toward persons with disabilities. In addition, the current study examined whether differences in faculty attitudes toward diversity may be viewed as positively mediating the relationship between instructor characteristics and their attitudes toward persons with disabilities. This study concludes that faculty members may not be viewing disability as part of the greater construct of diversity with empirical evidence. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Psychology in the Public Forum: Perspectives on Persons with Disabilities.

Jackman (1983) states that the predominant perspective in America on persons with disabilities is to view them as flawed individuals who need to be rehabilitated in order to be made as normal as possible. Because people with disabilities cannot do some of those things done by people without disabilities, they are seen as incompetent, helpless, unproductive, and dependent on others for care. If individuals with disabilities are to improve their status, it is necessary for them to rely on those who can help them accommodate to their disabilities. An alternative conception is to view individuals with disabilities as members of a minority group who lack power and are denied their civil rights. From this perspective, persons with disabilities face problems stemming from a society that stigmatizes and devalues those who are different. Many psychologists could be contributing to knowledge on and service to people with handicaps from both perspectives, but most view such activities as a narrow area of specialization outside the mainstream. The articles in this forum discuss the relationship among psychological knowledge, issues relating to those with disabilities, and public policy primarily from the civil rights perspective. It is hoped that the civil rights perspective can be added to the dominant rehabilitation viewpoint within psychology, attract a greater following within psychology, and produce a psychology of disability that can speak more forcefully to issues of disability and public policy. The six articles in this forum suggest that issues of disability need not remain narrowly segmented within psychology and nearly invisible to most of the discipline. Through greater attention by a broader segment of psychology and attention to the civil rights as well as the rehabilitation perspective, more enlightened public policies on issues of disability can emerge. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Physical Disability, Unemployment, and Mental Health.

Objective: Assess the joint mental health effects of unemployment and physical disability. Study Design: Face-to-face interviews with participants screened for the presence of a physical disability and a matched comparison sample obtained from the same geographic area. Participants: Five hundred fifty-six community-based physically disabled persons and 460 matched comparison participants. Outcome Measures: Mastery (L. I. Pearlin & C. Schooler, 1978) and self-esteem (M. Rosenberg, 1979), financial strain, and depression (L. S. Radloff, 1977). Results: Persons with disabilities are 5 times more likely than their nondisabled counterparts to be involuntarily unemployed. However, this difference accounts for only about 30% of the elevations in depression among the former. Furthermore, the emotional impact of unemployment appears to be greater among those with disabilities. Conclusions: There appears to be no overlap in the psychological impacts of physical disability and unemployment-the 2 stressors representing cumulative, and even synergistic, adversity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The Disclosure Conundrum: How People With Psychiatric Disabilities Navigate Employment.

The vocational rehabilitation and mental health literatures usually urge people with psychiatric disabilities to disclose their disability at work. Reasons for preferring disclosure include the opportunity to invoke rights conferred by the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, the risk of losing federal disability benefits when earning a higher income, and the belief--held by many professionals--that people with psychiatric disabilities will experience permanently debilitating symptoms. However, a newer model of recovery from psychiatric disability challenges these assumptions. A qualitative study of people with psychiatric disabilities explored these issues. The participants were current or former recipients of social security benefits provided to persons with significant disabilities. Participants described complex situations around employment and disclosure, which were more difficult to resolve than disclosure advocates have recognized. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Verbal interactions with individuals presenting with and without physical disability.

Examined actual language behavior directed toward individuals with and without apparent disabilities in a standardized but naturalistic setting. Four experimenters (2 male and 2 female) requested directions to the bookstore from a total of 160 college students on a university campus. Each experimenter portrayed a student with a disability using a wheelchair and a student without a disability. Conversations were surreptitiously recorded, and verbal interaction patterns were analyzed. Significant differences were observed on all dependent variables, word counts, frequency of interrogatives, and use of locator words. Findings suggest that individuals with a disability are addressed differently than those without disabilities, and provide limited behavioral replication of research documenting differential responses of college students to persons with and without disabilities. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Freud and disability.

Reviewed several books about Freud's work and Psychological Abstracts to provide an analysis of Freud's writings and theories as related to persons with physical disabilities and identify references to disability by Freud and pertinent supportive literature. Although Freud wrote very little about disability per se, many of his ideas can be applied directly to understanding attitudes toward disability and adjustment to disability processes. The relevance of concepts such as castration anxiety, fear of loss of love, ego strength, secondary gain, and the death instinct are specifically discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A conjoint analysis of factors influencing American and Taiwanese college students' preferences for people with disabilities.

Objective: To determine the effect of demographic variables on attitudes toward disability. Participants: Eighty-three female American and 89 female Taiwanese college students. Outcome Measure: A conjoint measurement of 16 stimulus cards (representing people with varying disability labels, severity of disability, age, gender, and education). Procedures: The participants were asked to sort the stimulus cards according to their personal preferences for working with people with disabilities. Results: Younger and higher educated women with milder disabilities were preferred by both Taiwanese and American students. Preference formation is affected by both disability-related variables and other demographic variables (e.g., educational levels). Conclusion: The use of conjoint analysis to examine multiple attributes of persons with disabilities may have higher external validity than single-attribute-design studies. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Perception of disability labels: Effect of attitude and stimulus presentation.

60 undergraduates aged (18–25 yrs) were classified as having high or low attitudes toward disabled persons based on responses to the Scale to Measure Attitudes Toward Disabled Persons. Ss made all possible comparisons between pairs of disabilities; half the Ss completed a general disability label matrix, and half completed a specific disability label matrix. Results suggest an interaction between attitude and type of disability label. High attitude Ss generated a perceptual space different from low attitude Ss when the disability labels were specific. When the disability labels were general, the perceptual space generated between the 2 attitude conditions was similar. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Disability and identity: A study of identity patterns in adolescents with hearing impairments.

Some children with physical disabilities are encouraged to identify exclusively with nondisabled persons, relinquishing any identity with others who have disabilities. The implications of such a personal identification on adjustment were examined by measuring identity choice in 111 students (aged 15–19 yrs) at a state school for persons with hearing impairments. Ss were classified into 3 groups: those with a predominant hearing identity (able-bodied identity), those with a primary deaf identity (disabled identity), and those who identified with both groups (dual identity). Analyses focused on the relationship between the Ss' identity and indicators of the Ss' social relations, self-evaluations, academic achievement, and perceived family acceptance of their disability. Data indicate that an able-bodied identity was consistently associated with poorer outcomes and a dual identity with better outcomes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Hospital to community: Changes in practice and outcomes.

This article describes the need for psychologists working with persons with disabilities to establish validity procedures within research findings and clinical practices. It highlights the importance of providing a contextual framework for behavior by adopting a socioecological paradigm of disability. Theoretical, research, and clinical practice implications are discussed, such as the evolution of paradigms guiding rehabilitation, the need to move research out of the laboratories and into the field, and the importance of focusing on the broader socioenvironmental needs of persons with disabilities. The author also offers specific recommendations for psychologists engaged in activities across education, research, and clinical practice. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Social judgment toward job applicants with disabilities: Perception of personal qualities and competences.

Objective: Building on D. Stone and A. Colella's (1996) model, this article examines how job applicants with or without a physical disability are evaluated in relation to the nature of the job. Design: Data from 284 management undergraduates were collected through 2 experimental studies based on the same paradigm: Participants had to evaluate individuals with or without a disability applying for jobs that did or did not involve a great deal of interpersonal contact (Study 1) and for jobs typically reserved for men or for women (Study 2). Results: Job applicants with disability were rated more negatively than applicants without disability in poor-fit conditions (job involving a great deal of interpersonal contact, or male job). This devaluation was particularly marked in issues reflecting competence. By way of contrast, individuals with disabilities received higher ratings on personal qualities. Conclusions: To promote the employment of persons with disabilities, it is important not only to improve the level of qualification of people with disabilities but also to attempt to change the nature of perception of these individuals. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Disability and psychotherapy practice: Cultural competence and practical tips.

Persons with disabilities constitute the largest minority population within the United States, yet only recently has psychology entered the dialogue of treatment issues for this population beyond the traditional medical model. In this article the authors provide an overview of considerations for psychologists who work with clients presenting with disabilities. Specifically, we address conceptual models of disability and considerations for cultural competence for working with persons with disabilities. Within the cultural competence discussion, we include critical awareness and knowledge, skills development, and practice/applications; such as accessibility, consent forms and other handouts, the psychotherapy milieu, testing accommodations, and the importance of resources, which are provided in the Appendix. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The interdisciplinary status of rehabilitation psychology.

Examines the field of rehabilitation psychology from the perspectives of other social science disciplines. Each discipline is associated with certain assumptions, particular meanings of disability, and distinctive remedies. Rehabilitation psychologists overdetermine disability problems in terms of individual traits and dynamics. In this way, they may alienate citizens with disabilities who formulate their difficulties in terms of civil rights, environmental obstacles, and social pathology. The individualism that permeates psychology is criticized with formulations drawn from political science, sociology, economics, linguistics, and insights from philosophies of social science. A more inclusive perspective on disability would enable rehabilitationists to relate better to the emerging consumerism and political activism stirring among persons with handicaps. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Same- and cross-gender attitudes toward persons with physical disabilities.

Used the Disability Factor Scale-General (DFS-G) of J. Siller et al (1967) to measure 147 male and 139 female 11th-graders' attitudes toward persons with physical disabilities. A subgroup of Ss responded to a specially prepared version of the DFS-G that referred to males with disabilities, while a 2nd subgroup responded to a 2nd version of the questionnaire that referred to females with disabilities. A multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was performed, with scores on the 6 attitude scales of the DFS-G as the dependent variables. The 2 independent variables were Ss' gender and the sex of the person with the disability. Attitudes toward females with disabilities were less positive than attitudes toward males with disabilities. These less positive attitudes were expressed more by boys than by girls. Findings support the theoretical assumption that being disabled and female represents a double minority status. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The structure of attitudes toward persons with a disability, when specific disability and context are considered.

Examined the structure of the Disability Social Relationship (DSR) scale developed by S. A. Grand et al (1982) with data from 259 university students in 5 health care areas: occupational therapy, physical therapy, medicine, nursing, and clinical psychology. Data support the multidimensionality of attitudes toward persons who have a physical disability and the interaction influence of specific target disability and social situation on these attitudes. Attitudinal components, as measured by the DSR scale, reflected the importance of perceived limitations of particular disabilities, apprehensions concerning social stigmatization, situational constraints, and Ss' perceptions of functional limitations as interfering with relationships. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Preface.

Introduces the companion special issues of Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research and Rehabilitation Psychology, which are devoted to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). The ADA is a landmark piece of civil rights legislation. Unlike other legislation prohibiting discrimination against a class of individuals, the range of disabilities covered by the ADA goes far beyond the commonly recognized categories of mobility, vision, and hearing impairments to include a multitude of other medical, developmental, and mental conditions. In this post-ADA era, psychologists now have a legal as well as an ethical duty to provide complete access for persons with disabilities to our profession, our services, our places of work, and our communities. While the ADA is a milestone, it is also a starting point. There is a great need for the science of psychology to take the initiative and focus more research effort in the disability field. Our goal should be to look beyond the ADA for ways in which we can make our society more inclusive for persons with disabilities. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)