Instruments
Center for Social Development and Education Director Gary N. Siperstein, PhD, has created several assessment instruments for studying the attitudes of children toward potentially stigmatized groups. They include the Adjective Checklist (Siperstein, 1980), Friendship Activity Scale (Siperstein & Bak, 1985b), and Prognostic Belief Scale (Wolraich & Siperstein, 1983). These instruments have been employed in numerous studies on children's attitudes relating to visual impairments, autism, obesity, cancer, and physical and intellectual disabilities.
Box 1: Adjective Checklist
The Adjective Checklist (ACL), developed in 1980, is a measure of children’s attitudes utilizing a checklist format first employed by Gough (1952). The ACL allows children to select as many positive and negative adjectives from a provided list to describe a specific person.
Box 2: Friendship Activity Scale
The Friendship Activity Scale (FAS) was designed to measure children's behavioral intentions toward a peer with a disability. The FAS consists of items that represent common activities that children engage in with their friends in and outside of school.
Box 3: Prognostic Beliefs Scale
The Prognostic Beliefs Scale assesses respondents’ perceptions about the current capabilities or future capabilities of a person with a disability. Respondents check off the skills they believe the target person can or will be able to achieve. The more positive an individual’s prognosis (a higher number of items checked), the greater the expectation for individuals with intellectual disabilities to live and work in independent placements.
Additional information may be obtained by emailing Jeff Ramdass at jeffrey.ramdass@umb.edu. Please inform CSDE if you plan to use this instrument or some modification.