Abstract
BACKGROUND:
People with disabilities are one of the most marginalized groups in society, and having a disability significantly increases the likelihood of unemployment or underemployment. The reluctance to hire individuals with disabilities is significantly influenced by the longstanding, negative stereotypes of people with disabilities.
OBJECTIVE:
To better understand employers’ negative attitudes toward individuals with disabilities, assessment tools must properly capture factors contributing to this stigma.
METHODS:
The
RESULTS:
Results of the exploratory factor analysis indicate a strong, unidimensional structure of the scale accounting for 47.14% of the total variance with a sample. The single
CONCLUSION:
Results support the implementation of tailored interventions directed at specific areas of concern for employers and employees in hiring positions.
Introduction
Work is an integral part of modern life. It offers social legitimacy to people’s lives and is a major part of people’s identity (Fryers, 2006). Having a good job allows people to provide for themselves and their families, live with dignity, and contribute to society (Fryers, 2006). There is strong empirical evidence to indicate that individuals who are employed are healthier and happier than people who are excluded from the labor force (Waddell & Burton, 2006). Conversely, persons who are unemployed are at elevated risk for depression, anxiety, alcohol and substance use disorder, domestic violence, low self-esteem, and poor mental and physical health (Compton et al., 2014; Linn et al., 1985).
People with disabilities are one of the most mar-ginalized groups in society, and having a disability significantly increases the likelihood of unemployment, underemployment, and poverty (Yaghmaian et al., 2019). In 2014, the United States Congress passed the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) mandating state vocational rehabilitation agencies to accentuate their capacity for local labor market analysis, employer engagement, customized training, and postsecondary education in order to improve employment quality and opportunity for people with disabilities. However, the employment rate of people with disabilities is still strikingly low. Employment statistics indicated the employment-to-population ratio for working-age people with disabilities was 28.3 percent in September 2020, which is significa-ntly lower than the 69.7% employment rate of work-ing-age adults without disabilities (Kessler Foundation and University of New Hampshire, 2020). In 2019, even with a record low unemployment rate and managers reporting a high demand for workers, employers are still not hiring large numbers of people with disabilities (National Organization for Disability, 2019). Employers’ reluctance to hire individuals with disabilities is significantly influenced by the longstanding, negative stereotypes of people with disabilities (Yaghmaian et al., 2019).
Ambivalence related to recruiting, hiring, and re-taining persons with disabilities is supported by several demand-side employment studies, which hig-hlight the impact of negative stigma. For example, the U. S. Department of Labor conducted a focus group study with employers in 13 major metropolitan areas representing a range of businesses and company sizes to identify major reasons employers are not hiring people with disabilities (Grizzard, 2005). The most common response was employers needed more accurate and practical information to dispel preconceptions about work behavior of people with disabilities. Domzal, Houtenville, and Sharma (2008) completed a large-scale employer survey (
Similarly, Kaye et al. (2011) conducted a focus group study with employers who do not hire individuals with disabilities. They identified three themes for not hiring people with disabilities: (1) lack of awareness of disability and accommodation issues, (2) concern over costs, and (3) fear of legal liability. Likewise, Amir et al. (2009) conducted several focus groups with employers in Chicago and Milwaukee and identified six disability employment stigmas: 1) people with disabilities often require extra time to learn new job tasks, 2) people with disabilities require accommodations to do the job, 3) people with disabilities have trouble getting their work done on time and often need help from others, 4) co-workers are uncomfortable, 5) people with disabilities tend to call in sick more, and 6) people with disabilities have trouble getting along with others on the job. In order to better assess the willingness of employers to hire individuals with disabilities, Strauser and Chan (2007) developed a measure of employers’ explicit, stigmatizing attitudes toward people with disabilities, as stigma serves as a primary barrier to employment for individuals with disabilities (Livneh et al., 2014; Yaghmaian et al., 2019). The scale was validated by Tu et al. (2018), as an assessment tool of employers’ stigmatizing attitudes toward cancer survivors in Taiwan.
Purpose of the present study
To further explore employers’ explicit, stigmatizing attitudes toward individuals with disabilities in the United States, the What is the measurement structure of the What is the internal consistency reliability estimate of this measure? Is there a relationship between employers’ explicit, stigmatizing attitudes and intention to hire people with disabilities?
Methods
Participants
One hundred and eighty employers and employees who were in hiring or management positions participated in this study. Thirty six percent of participants’ job titles were manager, followed by human resource staff person (25%), supervisor (22.2%), human resource director (9.4%), assistant director (3.3%), executive director (2.8%), and CEO/COO (1.7%). Additional information regarding the participants’ authority to hire employees, supervision of employees, company size, and demographic characteristics is in Table 1.
Participant demographic and companies characteristics (N = 180)
Participant demographic and companies characteristics (N = 180)
Employers’ stigmatizing attitudes toward people with disabilities scale
The
Procedure
Participants were invited to take part in the current study prior to attending a training on stigma ag-ainst individuals with disabilities in the workplace provided by the Rocky Mountain ADA Center. The Rocky Mountain ADA Center advertised the training opportunity to HR professionals, hiring managers, and supervisors in two metropolitan areas of Colorado. Multiple trainings were held, and each training was one and a half hours long and held onsite of interested organizations. Although hiring professionals were recruited for the training opportunities, other interested employees were able to participate. Prior to registering for the trainings, individuals were informed that data was being collected as part of the training, and participation in the research portion of the training was voluntary. Participants received an email invitation one week prior to the training to complete online survey instruments on employer stigma, positive and accepting attitudes toward disability, recruitment strategies, and intention to hire people with disabilities.
Data analysis
The Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS, version 26.0) was used for statistical analysis. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA), a common statistical technique for examining measurement st-ructures of clinical assessment instruments (Floyd & Widaman, 1995) was used to examine the factor structure of the
Results
Exploratory factor analysis
The 7×7 correlation matrix of the
Exploratory factor analysis using principal component factoring analysis with oblimin rotation (N = 180)
Exploratory factor analysis using principal component factoring analysis with oblimin rotation (N = 180)
Items on this factor reflect employers’ stigmatized attitudes toward employees with disabilities (e.g., “In my opinion/experience, people with disabilities tend to call in sick more often than other workers due to health or personal problem”), all items loaded significantly onto this factor (loadings ranging from 0.40 to 0.78). The internal consistency reliability coefficient was estimated at 0.79, indicating good reliability of the items constituting this factor. The mean rating for this scale was 2.24 (
To evaluate the construct validity of the
Correlations between the Employers’ Stigmatizing Attitudes Toward People with Disabilities Scale (the ESATPD Scale) and related constructs
**p < 0.001.
Correlations between the Employers’ Stigmatizing Attitudes Toward People with Disabilities Scale (the ESATPD Scale) and related constructs
**
The WIOA requires state vocational rehabilitation agencies to increase their efforts to engage and assist employers with creating employment opportunities for people with disabilities. Despite the legislative efforts to improve vocational rehabilitation to support people with disabilities to find meaningful employment, barriers to employment still persist. One of the major barriers to disability employment and inclusion is employers’ stigmatizing attitudes toward people with disabilities (Tu et al., 2018; Yaghmaian et al., 2019), and as a result, it should be assessed as a major component of workplace culture and disability inclusion climate. Rehabilitation researchers have previously validated assessment tools to help companies assess their disability inclusion climate, including human resource managers’ attitudes toward hiring people with disabilities (Iwanaga et al., 2020; Tu et al., 2018), and employers’ and human resource managers’ stigma were found to be negatively associated with willingness to hire people with disabilities.
The purpose of this study was to evaluate the psy-chometric properties of the
Implications
Conceptualizing stigma as a unitary construct is beneficial as it allows for the identification of employer stigma toward hiring people with disabilities at a broad level. In addition, it promotes the implementation of tailored interventions directed at specific areas of concern for employers and employees in hiring positions. The mean of the
Among the seven items that comprised this sc-ale, the lowest mean score was “In my opinion/exp-erience, people with disabilities have trouble getting along with others on the job (
Limitations
The present study has a few limitations to consider. A convenience sample was used in data collection, which impacts the generalizability of the results. In addition, the use of self-report surveys is subject to social desirability, particularly as it relates to employment of marginalized groups including people with disabilities.
Conclusion
The results of this study provided a psychometric validation of the
Conflict of interest
None to report.
Funding
Funding for this project was provided by the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research, funded Rocky Mountain ADA Center grant # NIDILRR #90DP0094.
