Development and validation of a scale to assess the attitude of healthcare professionals toward persons with disability

Objective: This study aimed to develop and validate an instrument that measures the attitudes of healthcare professionals toward persons with disabilities. Design: The Delphi survey consensus method was used to compose a preliminary questionnaire for survey. Then, healthcare professionals responded to the questionnaire online, and the results were used for psychometric analysis. Setting: Three tertiary hospitals. Subjects: A total of 993 healthcare professionals. Interventions: Not applicable. Main measures: Attitudes of healthcare professionals toward persons with disabilities. Results: A 28-item preliminary questionnaire was initially developed after a two-round Delphi survey with 16 experts. Through an online survey, the final 20 items were categorized as follows: behaviors in clinical situation, knowledge and skills, emotional response, and responsibility of healthcare professionals. The Cronbach's alpha coefficient for the total score was 0.890 and varied between 0.856 and 0.892 in the four subdomains. The newly developed tool showed an acceptable model fit. Healthcare professionals who participated in an education module showed higher scores in behavior and knowledge/skills subdomains than those who did not, whereas participants who had clinical experience with persons with disabilities demonstrated higher scores in emotional response and knowledge/skills subdomains. Conclusions: We developed a scale to measure the attitudes toward persons with disabilities of healthcare professionals. The scale demonstrated a sensitivity to measure a difference by participation in an education module or clinical experience with persons with disabilities.