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Although persons with disabilities compose a growing portion of workers, when compared with other aspects of diversity (e.g., race/ethnicity or gender), disability has received relatively little research attention. In a between-subjects experimental design with more than 600 participants, we evaluated the roles of disability type (AIDS, cerebral palsy, and stroke), stigma, and employee characteristics in acceptance of a coworker with a disability. Stigma largely mediated the relationship between disability type and acceptance. Employee characteristics had direct effects on some aspects of acceptance. Exploratory factor analysis of stigma revealed six factors; however, only a “performance impact” factor was consistently related to acceptance, suggesting that perceived implications of the coworker’s disability for job performance are critical.
McLaughlin et al. (Thu,) studied this question.