Comparing Disability Prototypes in the United States and Kenya

Abstract

The purpose of this cross-cultural research was to examine prototypical perspectives about disability groups in the United States and Kenya. Open-ended questions permitted participants to describe what they thought were prototypical characteristics of people in four disability groups (AIDS, hearing impairment, mental illness, and spinal cord injury). A global chi-square analysis indicated that significant differences existed in the prototypical responses of the two samples. While both samples had the highest percentage in the category of disability-focused responses, there were greater ability-focused and lesser disability-focused responses in the U.S. sample in comparison to the Kenyan sample. Further, individual chi-square analyses of each superordinate category, when examining the two samples across four disability categories, demonstrated that only one superordinate category, stigma, was significantly different between the two samples, whereas the other five superordinate categories (i.e., ability focus, disaoility focus, negative emotions, positive emotions, and random response) exhibited no significant differences. Implications of the findings are briefly discussed.