Variant Reactions to Physical Disabilities

Developmental Differences in Reactions to the Physically Disabled

“…A second popular measure of attitudes toward the disabled is the picture ranking method developed by Richardson and his colleagues (e.g., Goodman et al, 1963;Richard son, 1970;Richardson et al, 1961). This method is open to criticism because of problems with traditional data analysis (e.g., Alessi and Anthony, 1969;Mathews and Wes tie, 1966).…”

“…Various conclusions have been drawn about the effects of age on reactions to the physically disabled: age does not in fluence reactions to the disabled (e.g., Chesler, 1965;Goodman et al, 1963;Siller and Chipman, 1964); increasing age is associated with increasingly positive reactions to the disabled (e.g., Katz et al, 1976;Tringo, 1970;Willis et al, 1977); increasing age is associated with increasingly negative reactions to the disabled (e.g.. Baker, 1968\ Billings, 1963Simmons, 1949); and age is curvilinearly related to reactions to the disabled (e.g., Bateman, 1962;Caveness et al, 1969\Gozali, 1971. This heterogeneity of results is not surprising, because research in this area is characterized by a wide variety of comparison age levels and a wide variety of dependent measures.…”

“…Comparisons involved in past research extended from those in which the age levels were quite proximate as, for example, when Chester (1965) compared high school to college students and Rapier et al (1972) com pared fourth grade to sixth grade students, to those in which the age levels were quite distant as, for example, when Horowitz and Rees (1962) compared a vari ety of groups from first graders to adults and Horowitz et al (1965) compared a variety of groups from adolescents to adults. Dependent measures used in past research included the Attitude Toward Disabled Persons scale (e.g., Siller and Chipman, 1964), preference rankings for pictures of physically disabled children (e.g., Goodman et al 1963), opinion surveys (e.g., Caveness et al 1969), social distance scales (e.g., Siller, 1963Siller, , 1964, and a variety of behavioral measures (e.g., Katz et al, 1976;Willis et al, 1977).…”

Weighing obesity stigma: the relative strength of different forms of bias

“…This series of studies showed consistent results across participants of different ages and ethnic backgrounds: obese children were the most disliked among a group of children with disabilities and disfigurements. [10][11][12] The forced-choice ranking procedure used in these studies, recently updated using computerized technology, 13 is especially convenient for administration to children due to its clarity and simplicity. However, bias is a multidimensional construct, and research has not yet directly compared the complex construct of bias against obese people to bias against other groups.…”

Energy requirements of obese children and young adults

“…If we define obesity as a tricep skinfold thickness of greater than the 85th percentile from the US Health and Nutrition Evaluation Survey 11, then the percentage of US adolescents who are obese has increased from 15% in 1970 to 21% in 198021% in (Dietz, 1987. This is of great concern because of the adverse effects of adolescent obesity on social and emotional development (Goodman et al 1963) and because obesity is implicated in the development of hypertension (Rames et al 1978) and maturity-onset diabetes mellitus (Medalie et al 1974). Moreover, approximately 80% of obese adolescents become obese adults (Lloyd et al 1961) and between half and three-quarters of very obese adults (160% ideal-body-weight) were obese as children (Rimm & Rimm, 1976).…”