Scale of Social Attitudes towards the Inclusion of Autism: development and validation of a standardized instrument

• Grant number: 10/20039-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctoral
• Start date: April 01, 2011
• End date: March 31, 2014
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Education - Specific topics in Education
• Principal Investigator: Sadao Omote
• Grantee: Maria Cláudia Brito
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia e Ciências (FFC). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Marília. Marília , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The aim of this study will be the elaboration and validation of a standardized scale for the measurement of social attitudes towards the inclusion of people with autism. The steps performed for the development of the scale are as follows: construction of the preliminary version of the scale, in order to be submitted to initial evaluation; analysis of items of the preliminary version for the elaboration of the final version; construction of the final version submitted to the empirical and statistical study; study concerning reliability and validity of the scale. A heterogeneous sample of 650 participants, both genders, ages from18 years old and up, distributed into two groups. Group 1 comprises 300 participants who will answer the preliminary version and group 2 with 350 participants who will answer the final version. For the elaboration of the preliminary version, themes and subthemes will be identified about the inclusion of autism, identified in a corpus of scientific literature. From that, a list will be elaborated, comprising about 80 to 100 items, Likert format, with five alternatives which express different degrees of agreement of disagreement. For analysis of items, the preliminary version will be applied to group 1, in order to identify the items with satisfactory understanding description for the final version, comprising about 30 to 35 items. The study which will measure reliability and validity, the final version will be applied to different samples of group 2. In order to evaluate reability and validity, method test-retest, the split-half method and alpha Cronbach will be employed. In order to assess validity, will be analyzed the scores of both groups of people, who present certainly different attitudes towards inclusion; the changes on the scores of a group of people before and after intervention, which will aim to modify the attitudes towards inclusion of autism; and a factorial analysis will be employed.