Explicit and implicit disability attitudes of healthcare providers.
Laura VanPuymbrouck, Carli Friedman, Heather Feldner
PMID 32105109WHAT IT FOUND
Most healthcare providers report no conscious bias against people with disabilities, but the vast majority show implicit preference for nondisabled people.
This mismatch suggests well-meaning clinicians may still act on unconscious biases, impacting care decisions without realizing it.
Key findings
01While 63.7% of providers reported no explicit preference for people with or without disabilities, 83.6% showed an implicit preference for nondisabled people.
02The largest group of providers (12,939) were categorized as 'aversive ableists', meaning they held low explicit prejudice but high implicit prejudice.
03Providers who had friends, acquaintances, or family members with disabilities, or who had disabilities themselves, showed lower explicit and implicit bias scores.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for PTsWhat it means for OTsWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The sample was a convenience sample from an online database, not a representative sample of all healthcare providers, so there is a risk of self-selection bias. The explicit measure relied on a single self-report question, which may not fully capture conscious attitudes and is susceptible to social desirability bias. The study is correlational; it identifies associations between demographics and bias but cannot prove that having a friend with a disability causes lower bias. Critiques of the Implicit Association Test (IAT) regarding its psychometric properties and susceptibility to faking are acknowledged, so implicit scores should be interpreted with caution.
Declared interests
The authors did not report any specific funding sources or conflicts of interest in the provided text. The data was obtained from Project Implicit, a well-known non-profit organization.
The easy way to misread this
Do not interpret the demographic associations as causal. Having a friend with a disability is correlated with lower bias, but this study does not prove that making friends with people with disabilities will reduce your implicit bias, nor does it suggest that providers without such connections are inherently biased.