1205 - Evaluating Student Perceptions of People with Disabilities Before and After Participation in Disability-Centered Curriculum

Objectives: Health science pre-professional students' attitudes toward people with disabilities influence patient care and the inclusivity of health systems. Educational efforts aim to shift these attitudes, but the evidence of impact is limited. We examined whether a course with a semester-long disability-centered curriculum produced measurable changes in explicit and implicit attitudes among physical therapy students.

Design: Eighteen physical therapy students completed pre- and post-course surveys. Instruments included: Attitudes Toward Disabled Persons (ATDP; higher = more positive attitudes), Perceptions of Disability Scale (PoDS; subscales: Sympathy, Empathy, Advocacy), Multidimensional Attitudes Scale (MAS; Affect, Cognition, Behavior; higher = more negative attitudes), and the Disability Implicit Association Test (IAT; positive = pro-abled bias, negative = pro-disability bias). Text and numeric responses were converted to standardized numeric values prior to scoring, and designated items were reverse-scored per published guidelines. Completeness of pre/post data was confirmed (n = 18). Shapiro–Wilk tests assessed normality of pre–post differences. Paired t-tests were applied when assumptions were met, whereas Wilcoxon signed-rank tests were used otherwise. Effect sizes were estimated with Cohen’s dz.

Results:

ATDP scores rose slightly (+1.1 points, p=0.58). PoDS showed small, non-significant changes: Sympathy decreased (−0.13, Wilcoxon p=0.25), Empathy increased (+0.10, p=0.27), and Advocacy remained stable (+0.03, Wilcoxon p=0.66). MAS subscales showed small decreases in negative affect (−0.24, p=0.13), cognition (−0.08, p=0.57), and behavior (−0.10, p=0.37). IAT scores shifted more negative (−0.14, p=0.19), suggesting a slight move toward greater bias against disability. No differences were statistically significant.

Conclusions: In this pilot sample, a semester-long course with a disability-centered curriculum did not yield statistically significant changes. Nonetheless, small improvements in empathy and affect suggest potential benefit. Findings underscore both the promise and the challenge of shifting disability-related attitudes during health profession training. Future research with larger, diverse cohorts and longitudinal follow-up is needed to determine whether curricular exposure can produce durable changes.