The symbolic intersecting ableism and racism scale.
Carli Friedman
PMID 40356696WHAT IT FOUND
When asked about disabled people of color specifically, respondents were more likely to deny discrimination exists than when asked about disabled people generally.
This suggests general attitudes toward disability do not automatically translate to equitable care for multiply marginalized patients.
Key findings
01The new scale identified three factors: denial of continuing discrimination, individualism, and empathy.
02Participants showed higher bias (denial of discrimination) when the target was 'disabled people of color' compared to 'disabled people' broadly.
03The scale showed significant, though modest, correlations with explicit preference for nondisabled white people and relative warmth scores.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they found
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
The sample was not representative of the US population; it was predominantly white (76.37%) and cisgender women (66.60%). Participants self-selected from a health volunteer registry, introducing potential self-selection bias. The study was conducted online, which may have excluded individuals with certain disabilities who lack access or require specific support. The Cronbach's alpha for the Empathy factor was 0.59, which is below the commonly accepted threshold for reliability. The correlations with other explicit measures were modest (r = 0.22–0.23), indicating the SIARS captures a specific aspect of bias not fully covered by simple preference or warmth ratings.
Declared interests
The study was funded by the WITH Foundation. The authors declared financial support was received.
The easy way to misread this
Do not assume this scale is ready for clinical diagnostic use or that it predicts individual patient outcomes. It is a research tool for measuring attitudes in populations, and the modest reliability of some subscales and the non-representative sample limit its current applicability to individual therapist self-assessment or patient care planning.