Perception and acceptance of people with disabilities by employers and co-workers

Abstract

The perception of people with disabilities is crucial for their full inclusion and in order that they might stay economically active. The measurement tools used should be resistant to the demographic or professional characteristics of the research participants. The article attempts to test this resistance for one of the most popular tools measuring the perception of people with disabilities in everyday life—the Attitudes to Disability Scale (ADS) test developed by the WHOQOL Group. Another issue raised in the article is the acceptance of people with various types of disabilities in terms of their possible employment. We checked the differentiation of acceptance among employers from different countries. This article uses representative samples of respondents from two studies— the CATI research (2019) on samples of Polish employers and co-workers, and the CAWI research (2021) on samples of employers from Poland and Finland. The analysis methods used included confirmatory factor analysis, nested models and nonparametric analysis of variance. The research confirmed the resistance of the ADS scale to respondents’ characteristics, and found no differences for nested models constructed for groups based on categorical variables characterizing the respondents. As for acceptance of various types of disability in the workplace, significant differences were found in the statements of employers from Poland and Finland.