The Postsecondary Student Survey of Disability-Related Stigma: Development of a Disability Stigma Measurement

College students with disabilities have long suffered from a lack of accommodation in higher education. Even with the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, and similar legislation in other counties, the level of awareness and active support has typically been much lower than for students in grade school or secondary schools. Perhaps the greatest obstacle has been latent stigma and bias against such students, an invisible and difficult to measure effect. This study designed an instrument to effectively produce a valid measure of the degree of stigma students with disabilities experience at the college and university level. The instrument may have broader applications, and lead to an increased awareness of an underappreciated problem in postsecondary education. The pilot study also verifies the existence of the problem.