The Development and Pilot-Testing of the Autism Attitude Acceptance Scale: An Instrument Measuring Autism Acceptance.

Abstract

Although previous studies have measured attitudes about autism to understand ways to ameliorate stigmatized beliefs, nonautistic individuals' acceptance of autism is still not well understood. This study aimed to develop and pilot test the Autism Attitude Acceptance Scale (AAAS), a self-report instrument that measures nonautistic adults' autism acceptance based on the neurodiversity framework, and examine the associations between autism acceptance and purported variables (disability-related experience/awareness variables and demographic characteristics). The author piloted the AAAS with 122 nonautistic adults. Principal component analysis and reliability analysis were used to examine the factor structure and psychometric properties of the AAAS. The associations between the AAAS and autism knowledge, the quantity and quality of previous contact, neurodiversity awareness, and demographic variables were examined using Pearson's r correlations, t-tests, and analyses of variance. The author constructed two subscales of the AAAS, General Acceptance (GA) and Attitudes toward Treating Autistic Behaviors (ATAB). The GA measures the acceptance of autism as a unique way of being, willingness to provide support to autistic individuals, and feeling comfortable while interacting with them. The ATAB measures how strongly a person believes that receiving treatments to reduce autistic symptoms will or will not benefit autistic individuals. The GA was associated with autism knowledge, quality and quantity of previous contact with autistic individuals, neurodiversity awareness, gender, ethnicity, and education level of participants. The ATAB was significantly associated with autism knowledge and quality and quantity of previous contact; the ATAB did not have any significant associations with neurodiversity awareness and demographic variables. The AAAS, which validly and reliably measures nonautistic individuals' autism acceptance, identified the subgroups with low autism acceptance. This study calls for further examination of the underlying mechanism of autism acceptance and neurodiversity framework to restructure nonautistic individuals' attitudes about autism. Why was this study done?: There are many studies that measure how nonautistic individuals think about autism. These studies tried to identify subgroups of people with particularly negative attitudes toward autism and improve those attitudes. Autistic advocates are increasingly noting the importance of autism acceptance, which asks people to accept autistic individuals for who they are as they are. Autism acceptance draws from the neurodiversity framework, which considers autism as a part of natural diversity and rejects the idea that autistic needs to be fixed. However, there is currently no tool that measures nonautistic individuals' autism acceptance.What was the purpose of this study?: The purpose of this study is to develop the Autism Attitude Acceptance Scale (AAAS), which measures nonautistic adults' acceptance of autistic individuals.What did the researchers do?: The author developed an autism acceptance survey that draws on a neurodiversity framework, and 122 nonautistic adults completed the instrument in an online survey along with the existing attitude scales. A series of statistical analyses were conducted to examine if the AAAS can be used to measure autism acceptance.What were the results of the study?: The AAAS consists of two subscales: General Acceptance (GA), which measures how much a person accepts autism as a unique way of beings and feels more comfortable to provide support to and have a personal relationship with an autistic person, and Attitudes toward Treating Autistic Behavior (ATAB), which measures how much a person agrees that receiving treatments to reduce autistic symptoms will benefit autistic individuals. Accurate knowledge about autism, high quality of previous contact, and more frequent contact were significantly associated with higher scores in both GA and ATAB subscales. Being white, female, and aware of the neurodiversity framework and having a higher level of education were positively associated only with the GA, but not with ATAB.What do these findings add to what was already known?: This is the first study to conceptualize and measure autism acceptance of nonautistic individuals as a distinct construct. How much a nonautistic person thinks favorably of autistic individuals is different from how he/she thinks about receiving treatments to reduce autistic symptoms. Increasing the quality and quantity of contact with autistic individuals and knowledge about autism may be helpful in promoting autism acceptance. Demographic variables may account for only specific types of attitudes about autism.What are potential weaknesses in the study?: As a pilot study, this study included a small number of participants, and participants who participated were those could be reached or contacted easily. Also, participants may act differently in real life than how they responded on the survey.How will these findings help autistic adults now or in the future?: The AAAS can be used with existing tools to inform ways to promote autism attitudes and find ways to appreciate autistic differences.