Attitudes towards parents with learning disabilities : the development of a reliable and valid measure and investigation of potential correlates

• Main Author: McCaig, Victoria
• Published: University of East Anglia 2003
• Subjects: 362.27085
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.410032

Little research has examined the nature of attitudes towards parents with learning disabilities directly. The 'Parenting Interactional Model' (Feldman, 2002) proposes a link between social factors, such as discrimination and stigmatisation, the extent and nature of social support and parental well-being of those with learning disabilities. This study involved the investigation of the psychometric properties of a scale designed to measure attitudes towards parenting by those with learning disabilities (ATPLD). It also examined the potential relationship between a variety of demographic variables and experiences of contact with people with learning disabilities and responses on this scale. The ATDP-R (Slevin and Sines, 1996) was used as a comparison to measure general attitudes towards those with learning disabilities. A number of 'open questions' asked participants opinions about the problems faced by parents with learning disabilities and asked them to attribute causes for these. 278 participants completed the measures in the study and were grouped according to four categories, specialist learning disability staff, general health-care staff, students on health-related courses and lay people. The ATPLD demonstrated a good level of internal reliability, test-retest reliability and concurrent validity with the ATDP-R. However, it appeared to be measuring a construct labelled 'willingness to accept whether people with learning disabilities should have babies' rather than 'attitudes towards parenting by people with learning disabilities'. Women and specialist learning disability staff scored significantly more positively than men, lay people and general health-care staff on both attitude scales. The ATPLD was significantly correlated with measures of overall contact, contact in a work setting and contact with parents with learning disabilities, but not contact in a social setting.