About this srcd poster session

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Panel information
Panel 7. Diversity, Equity & Social Justice

Abstract

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Approximately 25-75% of youth experience discrimination in their day-to-day life (Lloyd et al., 2020). Although racial and ethnic discrimination have been widely studied (Metzner et al., 2022; Yip et al., 2024), little research has examined discrimination in samples of disabled youth. In an exception, approximately 18% of youth reported having a disability and about 12% reported experiencing discrimination due to their disability (Daley et al., 2018). The widely utilized daily discrimination survey (Williams, 1997) assesses self-reported experiences of unfair treatment due to membership in a group, however, there are few items that assess benevolent ableism which disabled people commonly experience. The present study aims to examine item level prevalence in discrimination as well as examine disability-related demographic differences in discrimination experiences.
Our sample was drawn from a larger study focused on developing best practices for a peer mentoring program called Peer to Peer. This program partners peer mentors with mentees to promote friendship and develop skills among participants. Our sample was comprised of 140 disabled adolescents in middle (69.3%) and high (29.3%) school (Mage = 13.84, SD = 1.98). The sample included the following racial/ethnic demographics: 0.01% Asian, 3.57% Black, 5.0% Hispanic/Spanish origin, 2.86% Middle Eastern, 14.29% Native American, and 59.29 white, 4.29% who selected more than one racial group, and 10.0% who preferred not to say. The participants were 42.1% girls and 53.6% boys, the remaining six participants self-identified their gender or preferred not to say. Additionally, 60% of the sample participated as a mentee with the Peer to Peer program and 40% did not; 31% identified a family member as disabled, 40.7% identified a friend as disabled, and 45% identified themselves as disabled. Participants who selected being a mentee with our program, identified as disabled, or reported receiving special education services completed disability-related discrimination items (Williams et al., 1997). One additional discrimination item was created to assess benevolent ableism (“You are helped more than other people”).
Prevalence of endorsement for each discrimination item is shown in Table 1. The item to assess benevolent ableism was the most highly endorsed item among our participants. Due to survey delivery challenges, participant responses on discrimination items across the two waves were averaged for mean comparisons. Results of independent samples t-tests comparing differences in item-level and scale-level disability-related discrimination for several disability-related demographic variables are shown in Table 2. On average, disabled adolescents that were part of the Peer to Peer program as mentees reported more discrimination on items on the discrimination scale compared to their peers who did not participate in the program. Similar results were found for participants who identified as disabled reporting more disability-related discrimination compared to those who did not identify as disabled. Finally, disabled adolescents who had disabled friends reported lower levels of discrimination on several discrimination items. The results of this study support the need to assess benevolent ableism as a form of discrimination among disabled youth. This study demonstrates important demographic differences in experiences of discrimination among disabled youth.

Author information

Author	Role
Dr. Leanna McWood, Ph.D., North Dakota State University	Presenting author
Trinh Ta, North Dakota State University	Non-presenting author

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