Disability attitudes in healthcare scale: translation and cross-cultural validation into Arabic using various medical samples

Abstract

Purpose: Cross-cultural adaptation of the Disability Attitudes in Health Care Scale (DAHCS) into Arabic to assess the attitude toward people with disabilities. The objective of this study was to: firstly, translate and cross-culturally adapt the DAHCS into Arabic and secondly, assess its psychometric properties. Further, the goal was to investigate bachelor medical students' and doctors' attitude toward people with disabilities and highlight the need to establish the scale's reliability and validity by employing various samples.

Methods: A convenience sample of 201 medical students and 105 doctors was used. Arabic DAHCS factors were extracted and confirmed by Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA), and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA).

Results: The findings revealed that medical professionals and students hold a positive attitude toward people with disabilities. The Mann-Whitney U and Kruskal-Wallis tests revealed no significant differences in the study's variables. EFA identified four factors. CFA showed a good fit to the model. Also, convergent and discriminant validity were achieved. Cronbach's Alpha and McDonald's Omega values for all factors were satisfactory. However, the study found a low value of Cronbach's Alpha and Omega for the fourth factor.

Conclusions: The DAHCS was cross-culturally adapted into the Arabic language and its validity and reliability were achieved.

Keywords: Disability; attitudes; health care; scale; validation.