Mary E. McLaughlin

Stigma and Acceptance of Persons With Disabilities Understudied Aspects of Workforce Diversity

Although persons with disabilities compose a growing portion of workers, when compared with other aspects of diversity (e.g., race/ethnicity or gender), disability has received relatively little research attention. In a between-subjects experimental design with more than 600 participants, we evaluated the roles of disability type (AIDS, cerebral palsy, and stroke), stigma, and employee characteristics in acceptance of a coworker with a disability. Stigma largely mediated the relationship between disability type and acceptance. Employee characteristics had direct effects on some aspects of acceptance. Exploratory factor analysis of stigma revealed six factors; however, only a “performance impact” factor was consistently related to acceptance, suggesting that perceived implications of the coworker’s disability for job performance are critical.

Cognitive processes in self-report responses: tests of item context effects in work attitude measures.

Much applied research relies on multi-item, self-report instruments. Drawing from recent cognitive theories, it was hypothesized that the items preceding a self-report item, its item context, can generate cognitive carryover and prompt context-consistent responses. These hypotheses were tested in 2 investigations: a field experiment involving 431 employees of a nonprofit urban hospital and a laboratory replication involving 245 undergraduate business students who held full- or part-time jobs. In both studies, evaluatively neutral items were placed in specially arranged blocks of uniformly positive, uniformly negative, or randomly mixed items on 3 modified Job Descriptive Index scales. Responses to the neutral items differed across the 3 forms, but scale-level psychometric properties remained unchanged. The implications of these item- and scale-level results for a variety of self-report measures in organizations are discussed.

Discrimination, harassment, and the glass ceiling: Women executives as change agents

In this article, we discuss the relationships between discrimination, harassment, and the glass ceiling, arguing that many of the factors that preclude women from occupying executive and managerial positions also foster sexual harassment. We suggest that measures designed to increase numbers of women in higher level positions will reduce sexual harassment. We first define and discuss discrimination, harassment, and the glass ceiling, relationships between each, and relevant legislation. We next discuss the relationships between gender and sexual harassment, emphasizing the influence of gender inequality on sexual harassment. We then present recommendations for organizations seeking to reduce sexual harassment, emphasizing the role that women executives may play in such efforts and, importantly, the recursive effects of such efforts on increasing the numbers of women in higher level positions in organizations.

Structural Properties and Psychometric Qualities of Organizational Self-Reports: Field Tests of Connections Predicted by Cognitive Theory

Recent cognitive theories about question interpretation, information retrieval, and judgment-response mapping were used to develop hypotheses about how structural properties of the context of self-report items affects psychometric qualities. The hypotheses were tested in three experiments. In Study 1, a field experiment with 366 security firm employees, manipulation of the evaluative (positive vs. null vs. negative) context of a neutral item embedded in a job affect measure yielded differences in item parameters and correlations with other constructs. In Study 2, a field experiment with 392 chemical processing employees, manipulation of the physical context (“boxed” random vs. uniform groupings) of job attitude and perception items produced differences in internal consistencies and discriminant validities, as well as differences in measurement and structural models. In Study 3, an experiment with 187 undergraduate business students, manipulation of response contexts (low vs. open-ended vs. high ranges of response options) produced differences in reported frequencies of stress-related health symptoms and in correlations with other constructs. Implications are discussed with regard to designing and administering self-report items on organizational surveys.

LINKING COGNITIVE HYPOTHESES AND PSYCHOMETRIC PROPERTIES: EFFECTS OF ITEM CONTEXT, GROUPING CUES AND SCALE RANGE ON RESPONSES TO SELF-REPORT INSTRUMENTS.

From recent cognitive research, we develop hypotheses about how format characteristics of self-report instruments affect interpretation, retrieval, judgment, and response processes. We test and support these hypotheses in three experiments - two involving field samples and one involving a laboratory sample - by examining predicted differences in psychometric properties across format conditions.