A new measure of physicians' erroneous assumptions towards adults with intellectual disability: A first study.
A ready-to-use 27-item scale now measures—and helps correct—doctors’ harmful assumptions about adults with intellectual disability.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team asked adults with intellectual disability, family members, and advocates to name the worst assumptions doctors make.
They turned the top 27 answers into a short checklist any medical school can use to test—and fix—student attitudes.
What they found
The 27 items form one clear scale. It captures beliefs like “these patients can’t feel pain” or “they never live on their own.”
The scale is ready for classrooms; no extra steps needed.
How this fits with other research
Noordenbos et al. (2012) showed college students also sell adults with ID short. The new tool moves the lens to doctors, the group that writes scripts and orders tests.
John et al. (2018) used focus groups to list autism myths. Both studies let stakeholders speak first, then package the myths for easy teaching.
Hassanein (2015) proved that facts plus real contact change teacher minds. The new scale gives medical schools a simple pre-test to see if the same combo works with physicians.
Why it matters
You can hand this 27-item scale to your local medical school or clinic. A quick pre-class quiz shows which wrong ideas are strongest. Pair the results with stories from actual adults with ID. The scale tracks change, so you’ll know if the training stuck.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
BACKGROUND: Incomplete knowledge and unfamiliarity with intellectual disability (ID) contribute to erroneous assumptions of physicians towards ID, which negatively impact the health equity of people with ID. This study aimed to identify the erroneous assumptions that, based on the ID stakeholders' perceptions, were the most prevalent in physicians and damaging for the healthcare of adults with ID, verify their unidimensionality and that no personal characteristics of ID stakeholders were associated with their ratings of erroneous assumptions' prevalence and damage. METHODS: Seventy-four possible physician erroneous assumptions were developed concerning health, daily living skills and quality of life of individuals with ID. ID stakeholders rated each one for perceived prevalence in physicians and damage for the healthcare of adults with ID. Frequency analysis, exploratory factor analysis and correlations were run separately for participants' prevalence and damage ratings. RESULTS: Twenty-seven erroneous assumptions were identified as those perceived most prevalent and damaging. Their unidimensionality was ascertained and participants' characteristics were not associated with their prevalence and damage ratings. CONCLUSIONS: The identified assumptions are appropriate to represent the items of a new instrument that can be used in medical education to guide the development of curricula to change erroneous assumptions.
Journal of intellectual disability research : JIDR, 2023 · doi:10.1111/jir.13013