Factors influencing preferences for persons with disabilities: A conjoint analysis and cross-cultural comparison

The purpose of the present study was to, investigate the attitudes of college students toward persons with disabilities. College students' preference orderings toward five demographic characteristics of persons with disabilities (disability, severity, age, gender, and education) were examined. The relationships between preferences and participants' culture, gender, and contact with persons with disabilities were also examined.;Junior and senior college students majoring in special education, ages from 18 to 25, were recruited from two teaching universities in Taiwan (32 males and 89 females) and four universities in America (83 females). The conjoint analysis method was used to develop two card sets (16 and 18 cards) to investigate college students' preference orderings and relative importance of five attributes of persons with disabilities. The Contact with Disabled Persons Scale (Yuker & Hurley, 1987) was modified and used to measure participants' prior contact with persons with disabilities. Participants were told that they were going to join a hypothetical companion program as a mentor or companion. Participants were instructed to sort the cards according to their personal preferences for working with individuals with disabilities. After sorting two card sets, students were asked to provide demographic information and to complete the modified CDP scale.;Major findings can be summarized as follows: (a) Younger and higher educated females with milder disabilities were preferred by the male and female Taiwanese groups. and the female American group, (b) persons with physical disabilities were preferred by the male and female Taiwanese groups; persons with developmental disabilities were preferred by the female American group, and (c) college students with more prior contact were more likely to include attributes unrelated to disability in their preference-making processes. The statistical significant level, alpha = .05, was used.;It was concluded that although disability-related attributes are heavily involved in the preference-making process, preference formation is also significantly affected by demographic characteristics unrelated to disability. Thus, the present study, which included multiple variables of persons with disabilities in research design, may have higher external validity than previous studies with only a single variable (e.g., disability label).