Although contact with persons with disabilities is an important influence on attitudes toward such persons, no psychometrically adequate measures of contact exist. The Contact with Disabled Persons (CDP) Scale uses 20 items and five response categories to measure contact. Reliability data from over 200 persons indicate a corrected median split-half reliability coefficient of 0.93 and a median alpha coefficient of 0.92. Validity was examined by correlating CDP scores with scores on the Attitude Toward Disabled Persons (ATDP) Scale. Ten correlation coefficients ranged from -0.26 to +0.40, with a median correlation of +0.10. Most of the coefficients were attenuated because of the limited range of scores on one or both measures. The range of correlations indicates the complexity of the relationship between contact and attitudes.Reviews of the literature dealing with the effects of contact on attitudes toward members of minority or disadvantaged groups, including persons with disabilities, indicate that the effects are complex. Interaction between group members results in positive attitude change under some conditions, in no attitude change under others, and in negative attitude change under still other conditions (Amir, 1969). The effects depend on the interaction of factors that reflect the characteristics of both majority (nondisabled) and minority (disabled) group members, the type and extent of the interaction that occurs, and the way contact is measured (Cook, 1962). The purpose of this article is to examine the relationship between the attitudes of persons without disabilities toward persons with disabilities as a function of prior contact. The article will also discuss contact measurement and introduce a scale designed to provide a psychometrically adequate measure of contact. Allport (1954) discussed the influence of contact on intergroup attitudes. Fifteen years later Amir (1969) reviewed the literature on contact and specified the conditions under which contact results in positive or negative changes in attitude.
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