Development and Validation of Self-Acceptance Scale for People with Physical Disabilities in Malaysia

ABSTRACT

In the context of disability, acceptance of disability is acceptance of loss, and it is a process of value changes. Although social support such as family support has been found to be significantly correlated with disability adjustment, observation on the literature related to conceptualisation and scales on self-acceptance of people with disabilities hardly investigated family support in understanding the concept of self-acceptance of people with disabilities. In order to develop the Self-Acceptance Scale for People with Physical Disabilities (SAS-PD), this study was implemented based on the sequential exploratory design. The scale was administered on 247 persons with physical disabilities. It begins with qualitative data collection and analysis, followed up by a quantitative research method. Using exploratory factor analysis, we identified six factors, namely social stigma, enlargement, asset value, containment of disability effect, family support and body acceptance. Fifty-one items represented all these factors. The SAS-PD scale is suggested to be used for counsellor’s assessment on people with physical disability, as well as profile building before participation in any training programme.

KEYWORDS:

• Family support
• physical disabilities
• scale development
• self-acceptance

Disclosure of Potential Conflicts of Interest

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by grants from the Putra Grant, Universiti Putra Malaysia. (Project No: 9569800)Universiti Putra Malaysia [GP/2017/9569800];