Conception and validation of the Arab attitudes towards persons with intellectual disabilities scale

Abstract

Aim: Being aware of the attitudes of Arab society towards persons with intellectual disabilities can help researchers and professionals to explain discrimination against these people and to find solutions to address these. Several studies have designed questionnaires that measure attitudes towards persons with intellectual disabilities, but none of these tools are suitable for an Arab population. An instrument to measure attitudes towards people with intellectual disabilities in the Arabic language would be essential for this purpose. The present study aims to describe the development of the Arabs attitude toward persons with intellectual disabilities scale (AATPIDS) to exploit into the general Arab population’s attitudes toward persons with intellectual disabilities and presents its psychometric properties. Materials and</strong><strong> method: An Arabic language scale was developed based on the combination of the two construction methods: deductive and inductive and administered to 150 Arab persons. Following the principal component factor analysis, we managed the second version of the scale to 580 participants. The collected data were subjected to a confirmatory factor analysis by creating a model of structural equations to test the fit of the scale. Results: As a result, the final scale contains eight factors that constitute the three components of attitude. The incremental indices and The Jöreskog rhô values are satisfactory and revealed that the scale could be used to measure the attitude of a general Arabic people towards persons with intellectual disabilities. Conclusion: The validation revealed that the AATPIDS can be used to measure the Arab attitude towards persons with intellectual disabilities.