The acceptance of disability scale: adaptation and psychometric analysis

Abstract

The present study was conducted in order to adapt the Acceptance of Disability Scale (ADS) into Turkish. The original scale based on the medical model of disability (Linkowski, 1971) was revised by adding new items based on the social model of disability. After conducting a field study that consisted of eight cognitive interviews, unclear, confusing and offensive items were corrected before the validation study. In the validation study, the scale was administered to 252 participants with disabilities. In order to establish validity of the score obtained with the ADS, content, construct and criterion related evidence was sought. Confirmatory factor analysis showed a three-factor model had an average goodness of fit statistics. The factors were called containment, transformation and enlargement. Known group analyses showed the participants’ acceptance of disability score increases as their income and education level increase. The score was also higher for younger individuals, individuals with congenital disabilities and individuals who were employed. Moreover, the scale scores were positively correlated with resiliency and overall functioning, and negatively correlated with anxiety. The scores obtained with the Turkish ADS were reliable. Cronbach’s alpha coefficients were .85, .76, .84 for containment, transformation and enlargement respectively. The scale can be used as an effective tool to measure acceptance of disability for individuals with disabilities. Additional data analyses showed that after controlling functioning, resilience and anxiety could still explain the variability in acceptance of disability (AD) scores. Also, individuals with visual disabilities had higher AD than individuals with other disabilities.