Peter Blanck

Is Disability Disabling in All Workplaces? Workplace Disparities and Corporate Culture

Using nearly 30,000 employee surveys from fourteen companies, we find disability is linked to lower average pay, job security, training, and participation in decisions, and to more negative attitudes toward the job and company. Disability gaps in attitudes vary substantially, however, across companies and worksites, with no attitude gaps in worksites rated highly by all employees for fairness and responsiveness. The results indicate that corporate cultures that are responsive to the needs of all employees are especially beneficial for employees with disabilities.

What types of jobs do people with disabilities want

Introduction Do non-employed people with disabilities want to work, and if so, what types of jobs do they want? Researchers seeking to explain the low employment rate among people with disabilities have focused primarily on skill gaps, employment disincentives from disability income, accommodation mandates, and (to a lesser extent) employer attitudes and unwelcoming corporate cultures. There has been little attention paid to the attitudes of non-employed people with disabilities. Methods This paper uses the 2006 General Social Survey, a representative national survey of US adults that has disability information and a special supplement on worker preferences, to examine the above question. Results We find that, relative to their non-disabled counterparts, non-employed people with disabilities are (a) as likely to want a job but less likely to be actively searching, (b) as likely to have prior job experience, and (c) similar in their views of the importance of income, job security, and other valued job characteristics. The results, which vary little by type of impairment, indicate that the low employment rate of people with disabilities is not due to their reluctance to work or different job preferences. Conclusion Combined with evidence that a large share of new jobs can be performed by people with disabilities, the findings point toward the value of dismantling barriers to employment facing many people with disabilities.

Workforce participation by persons with disabilities: the National Health Interview Survey Disability Supplement, 1994 to 1995.

Using the National Health Interview Survey Disability Supplement of 1994 to 1995, we examined the factors associated with employment among Americans with disabilities. Persons with disabilities who were more educated were more likely to be working. Married men were more likely to work than unmarried men (odds ratio [OR], 1.58). Blacks were less likely to work than whites (OR, 0.56). Persons with disabilities related to cardiovascular disease (OR, 0.23), musculoskeletal disease (OR, 0.37), and respiratory disease (OR, 0.23) were less likely to work than other Americans with disabilities. Among persons with psychiatric disorders, there was considerable variety in the propensity to work. Persons with schizophrenia (OR, 0.24) and paranoid delusional disorder (OR, 0.34) were markedly less likely to work; persons with bipolar disorder (OR, 0.60) and major depression (OR, 0.69) were also less likely to work. Lastly, persons with self-reported alcohol abuse (OR, 1.30) were more likely to work, and persons with self-reported drug abuse (OR, 0.93) were not less likely to work, than others in our study population of Americans with disabilities.

Scientific Rewards and Conflicts of Ethical Choices in Human Subjects Research

The primary responsibility of the American Psychological Associations (APA) Committee on Standards in Research (CSR) is to advise the APA on issues and standards related to the protection of human participants in psychological research. A related goal is to enhance the use of good ethical practices by APA members. The purpose of this article is to foster the view of research ethics not as an affront to the integrity of sound research, but as opportunities for scientific rewards, including increased understanding of the meaning of data, enhanced recruitment, and the inclusion of more representative samples. Three ethical practices are discussed as examples of this general premise: respect for confidentiality, use of debriefing, and assurance that participants are noncoerced volunteers. The Committees intent is to promote consideration of these issues, not to promulgate specific guidelines or procedures.

Economics of the Americans with Disabilities Act, Part III: Does the ADA Disable the Disabled

The headline reads “Dubious Aid for the Disabled,” and the attached story speaks of evidence that the Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”) has led to reductions, rather than the anticipated increases, in the employment of individuals with disabilities. Can the results be believed? Some evidence suggests yes. The National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research recently reported, for example, that the ADA has not led to an improvement of employment conditions to disabled persons generally. The findings from the latest National Organization on Disability/Louis Harris poll suggest that the percentage of disabled individuals who are employed has declined since its surveys in 1994 and 1986. Numerous others have noted that the law is not yielding the outcomes expected by its drafters.

Developmental Changes in Decoding Discrepant and Nondiscrepant Nonverbal Cues

In this study we examined developmental changes in responses to consistent and discrepant video and audio nonverbal cues. A videotaped Nonverbal Discrepancy Test was administered to children aged 9-15 years. The discrepancy test measures (a) decoding accuracy—the extent to which subjects are able to identify affects (positivity and dominance) from visual (facial and body) cues and audio (content-filtered and random-spliced) cues—and (b) video primacy—the extent to which subjects are more influenced by video (face or body) than by audio cues. It was found that older children were more accurate at decoding affects than were younger children, particularly dominance-submission cues. Video primacy increased with age for facial cues (but not for body cues) and for cues of positivity (but not for cues of dominance). Relative to males younger female subjects showed more video primacy and older female subjects showed less video primacy, particularly for cues of dominance-submission. Relative to younger children older children showed less video primacy in decoding extremely discrepant audio and video cues than in decoding moderately discrepant audio and video cues. The development of nonverbal sensitivity to video and audio cues is discussed.

Developing Strategies for Decoding “Leaky” Messages: On Learning How and When to Decode Discrepant and Consistent Social Communications

Perhaps W. C. Fields’ intense dislike of children stemmed from his experience that children were unable to appreciate his sarcastic and lampooning humor. After all, a comedian is only as funny as the strength of his audience’s response. By definition, sarcastic humor expresses meaning contrary to what might be expected in a particular context. Similarly, feelings of ambivalence and attempts at deception also might lead senders, or comedians, to express different messages or affects in different verbal and nonverbal channels. This chapter is concerned with how and when children learn to interpret and understand these discrepancies among social messages, channels, or affects. In everyday life, children’s and adults’ interpretations, weighing, and “trusting” of these discrepant or “inconsistent” social messages certainly have implications for the development of satisfying interpersonal relations in general, to say nothing of the appreciation of sardonic comedians in particular.

Effects of Fear of Success on Intrinsic Motivation, Causal Attribution, and Choice Behavior.

This study examined the extent to which fear of success moderates effects of choice and task outcomes on intrinsic motivation, causal attribution, and subsequent choice behavior. Subjects worked either on puzzles of their choice or puzzles that were assigned to them and were then informed that they had performed either better or worse than the majority of other subjects. Measures of intrinsic motivation (task engagement during a free-choice period) and of attribution for performance were obtained. Subjects then indicated how much choice they wanted to have over similar tasks that they were going to perform. Finally, subjects completed a fear-of-success and a resultant achievement motivation measure. Results showed that following success, low fear-of-success subjects (in comparison to high fear-of-success subjects), showed higher intrinsic motivation, made more internal attributions, and wanted to have more choice if initially they had been given choice and less choice if initially they had been given no choice. There were no significant differences between low and high fear-of-success subjects following failure. These results were obtained for both males and females and could not be accounted for by resultant achievement motivation that was unrelated to fear of success. Implications of the construct of fear of success are discussed.

Does the ADA Disable the Disabled?— More Comments

This article examines how best to identify individuals with disabilities for analysis of the impact of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990. It also explores whether amending the ADA to broaden its definition of disability can be expected to improve the employment prospects of those who seek its protections. Answering these questions requires that we learn much more about the labor force participation decisions of those with disabilities. Our aim here is to encourage further consideration and analysis of these and related questions regarding the possible effects of the ADA and of other environmental factors that affect the labor force participation of those with disabilities.

''The Right to Make Choices'': The National Resource Center for Supported Decision-Making

Research shows that self-determination and the right to make life choices are key elements for a meaningful and independent life. Yet, older adults and people with disabilities are often placed in overly broad and restrictive guardianships, denying them their right to make daily life choices about where they live and who they interact with, their finances, and their health care. Supported decision-making (SDM)—where people use trusted friends, family members, and professionals to help them understand the situations and choices they face, so they may make their own decisions—is a means for increasing self-determination by encouraging and empowering people to make decisions about their lives to the maximum extent possible. This article examines the implications of overly broad guardianship and the potential for supported decision-making to address such circumstances. It introduces the National Resource Center for Supported Decision-Making as one means to advance the use of supported decision-making and increase self-determination.