Piecing together the puzzle: development of the Societal Attitudes towards Autism (SATA) scale

Piecing together the puzzle: development of theSocietal Attitudes towards Autism (SATA) scalejrs3_1224 1..8

Luci N. Flood, Amanda Bulgrin and Betsy L. MorganUniversity of Wisconsin – La Crosse, USA

Key words: Autism, attitudes, scale development, college students.

The rise in the prevalence of autism creates a needfor a reliable and valid measure of attitudes towardsautism. The current study describes the develop-ment of a brief 16- item measure of Societal Atti-tudes towards Autism (SATA) that exhibits soundpsychometric properties and has a demonstratedability to discriminate between expert and generalcollege student samples. The final SATA was theresult of pilot work on 75 items and exploratory andconfirmatory factor analyses on a 45-item versionwith 475 undergraduates. Knowledge and personaldistance subscales yielded inconsistent reliabilityand validity outcomes. The SATA showed strongcontent and construct validity as evidenced byknown groups discrimination, and predicted asso-ciations with an attitude towards disability measure,an autism preference item, and a measure ofimplicit attitudes towards disabilities.

Autism is a disorder that affects more children than juvenilediabetes, childhood cancer, and paediatric AIDS combinedeach year. Experts estimate that autism is diagnosed in oneout of every 91–110 births and affects 1.5 million people inthe USA (Kogan et al., 2009; National Survey of Children’sHealth, 2007). Autism is a general term used to describe agroup of complex developmental brain disorders known asPervasive Developmental Disorders (American PsychiatricAssociation, 2000). More specifically, autism spectrumdisorders are characterised by atypical development in‘socialization, communication, and behavior’, and symp-toms generally include ‘abnormalities in cognitive func-tioning, learning, attention, and sensory processing’ (Rice,2009, p. 1). Autism encompasses a complex spectrum ofbehaviours and outcomes that are reflected in a commonsaying in the autism community, ‘If you’ve met one personwith Autism – you’ve met one person with Autism’ (Shore,Rastelli and Grandin, 2006).

The rise of autism rates has been linked primarily toa combination of increased awareness and more accuratediagnoses (e.g., Hertz-Picciotto and Delwiche, 2009).Given the large number of potential children and adults withautism diagnoses now and in the future, it is important toensure that the general public is educated about autism andprepared to interact with people with autism. In addition,

due to the American Disabilities Act, current students aremore likely to interact with high-functioning individualswith autism across several educational settings. Nevilland White (2011) found that college students with a firstdegree relative with autism reported more openness towardsinteracting with individuals with autism than did collegestudents without such experience.

Despite the high levels of autism diagnosis, attitudestowards autism are relatively understudied. One aspect ofunderstanding current views towards autism is to developmeasures to accurately detect individuals’ authentic atti-tudes towards autism. An accurate measure will giveresearchers and practitioners a better understanding of thepublic’s orientation towards autism. This paper describesthe revision and validation of a measure designed specifi-cally to assess attitudes towards autism.

Attitudes towards disabilitiesSocial scientists describe attitudes as the psychologicaltendency to evaluate people or beliefs as either favourableor unfavourable (Eagly and Chaiken, 1993). Much of pastresearch on attitudes towards disabilities has focused onphysical disabilities (e.g., Rojahn, Komelasky and Man,2008; Stewart, 1988). In addition, past measures tend tomeasure attitudes towards disabilities at a more global level(across multiple disabilities) rather than specific level(a particular disability or diagnosis) (Antonak, 1981; Pruettand Chan, 2006; Seo and Chen, 2009; Yuker, Block andYoung, 1966).

Several measures exist to assess attitudes towards autismfor specific subgroups of individuals. Many of the existingmeasures involve reactions to the behaviour of childrenwith autism by adults (Iobst, Nabors and Rosenzweig et al.,2009), parents (e.g., Hebert and Koulouglioti, 2010), teach-ers (e.g., Park, Chitiyo and Choi, 2010) and schoolmates(e.g., Campbell, 2008; Morton and Campbell, 2008; Reiterand Vitani, 2007; Silton, 2010). In addition, several studieshave focused on the relationship between attitude andknowledge of autism on the placement of children withautism in mainstream classrooms (e.g., Horrocks, Whiteand Roberts, 2008; Middleton, 2006; Simpson, Griswoldand Myles, 1999). Fewer studies exist with the purpose ofproviding an attitudes towards autism measure aimed at amore general population.

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Mahoney (2008) adapted the Mental Retardation AttitudeInventory- Revised (Antonak and Harth, 1994) to developthe Autism Attitudes Inventory (AAI). The AAI appears tobe the first scale specifically developed to measure attitudestowards autism and includes approximately 60 questionsregarding interactions with people with autism that are cat-egorised into three major areas: social distance (the extentto which respondents are willing to interface with personswith autism across situations), academic integration (beliefsregarding inclusion of children with autism in mainstreamschools) and private rights (the rights of individuals withautism). Although one of the first serious attempts at anattitudes towards autism scale, Mahoney’s scale does notinclude items that tap respondent’s knowledge aboutautism’s causes and behavioural outcomes, has not beenfully vetted for construct validity and has not been pub-lished in a peer-reviewed journal. Given the large variabilityin the public’s beliefs about the causes of autism (e.g.,Goin-Kochel and Myers, 2005), some of which are errone-ous (e.g., vaccines, gluten-free diets) and the relativelysmall number of consistently apparent behaviours associ-ated with autism behaviours, we felt that the addition ofknowledge items was important in an attitudes towardsautism scale.

Developing an attitudes towards autism scaleIn this paper, we describe the development of an attitudetowards autism scale and report on the processes associatedwith establishing its reliability and validity. The purpose ofthe study was to develop an attitude towards autism scalethat reflected societal attitudes and knowledge of the disor-der. The end result is a 16-item measure that can be used toassess societal attitudes towards autism. The developmentof a psychometrically sound measure assessing attitudestowards autism services several functions. An attitudestowards autism scale allows researchers to distinguishbetween more general attitudes towards disabilities and spe-cific attitudes towards autism. A psychometrically soundscale allows researchers to assess change in attitudestowards autism over time and/or between groups. In addi-tion, the relationships between predictors and correlates ofattitudes towards autism can be explored. Finally, an atti-tudes towards autism scale can be used as an educationaland/or screening tool to enhance dialogues with pre-serviceteachers and other individuals who will be working directlywith children or adults with autism. Overall, scholarly pur-suits, social policy and educational ventures regardingautism may all be informed by the appropriate use of anattitudes towards autism scale.

MethodThe development of an Attitudes towards Autism Scale(ATA) was comprised of several stages. The original devel-opment of items built upon the 23 attitudes towards autismitems from Mahoney’s (2008) dissertation research result-ing in a 23-item scale representing three factors – socialdistance, academic integration and private rights. We modi-fied and added items according to his three subscales forvalidation with a younger participant pool. For instance,Mahoney had an item reading ‘Willing for my child to have

a child with autism as a close friend’ that we modified tobe more salient to college students reading ‘I would becomfortable having a friend with autism’. In addition, wecreated 35 items developed for a potential subscale createdto assess knowledge regarding autism behaviours andcauses. Many of the added items were based on thetwo primary authors’ one-on-one work with children withautism via community-service organisations. As indicatedin the results, four of Mahoney’s original items (three ofwhich were modified) remain in the final scale.

A pilot sample of 54 undergraduates completed the firstversion of the scale created from Mahoney’s work with ourmodifications and additions and comprised of 75 items.This pilot group received extra credit for participation, com-pleted the scale online, and was provided textboxes afterevery set of five items with the prompt ‘Please review thequestions above. Are any of them confusing? Poorlyworded? Not make sense to you? If so, please indicatewhich question by number and explain the problem’. Inaddition, a response item of ‘not enough knowledge’ wasincluded with each item.

The second version of the ATA was comprised of 45 itemsculled from the original 75 after discarding items thatshowed low variance, were flagged as vague and/or a sub-stantial percentage of respondents answered ‘not enoughknowledge’. In addition, items were modified based on thefeedback from two autism experts (a college professor anda supervisor at a local institution for children with cognitivedisabilities). For example, an item in the knowledge sub-scale previously worded ‘Individuals with autism display“flapping” behaviors’ was reworded to read ‘All individualswith autism demonstrate repetitive behaviors, such asrocking or flapping of arms or hands’. The 45-item versioncontinued to represent the four hypothesised subscales:social distance, academic integration, private rights andknowledge of behaviour and causes.

Four hundred and seventy-five US undergraduates (70%female; 90% Caucasian, representing a wide range ofmajors from across the campus) completed the 45-itemscale online and received extra credit for participation(2 credits provided for a class with approximately 700points available from traditional assessments such asexams, discussions and worksheets). Unfortunately, 182participants failed to provide demographic information,although they completed the scale items. All versions of theATA utilised a four-point response scale of ‘1 strongly dis-agree to 4 strongly agree’ with no midpoint and coded suchthat a high score indicates high acceptance or high knowl-edge. In addition, respondents provided the extent to whichthey have had contact with individuals with autism, whichwas coded as 1 experience for each of the following: Littleto no contact, have been employed somewhere where Iwork with a person with autism, have a friend with autism,have a family member with autism, have volunteered witha person with autism, have been a primary caregiver for aperson with autism, other (Range 0–4; M = 0.77; SD = 0.76;

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39% of the sample had no contact with an individual withautism).

Validity measuresIn addition to completing the ATA, the 475-undergraduatesample also completed several measures aimed at establish-ing the validity of the ATA; several of the validity measureswere collected with the original sample but several weeksafter the initial ATA data collection.

Preference towards persons with autism. At the time of theATA data collection, respondents also completed a seven-point item measuring their overall appraisal of individualswith autism ranging from ‘I strongly prefer people withautism to people without autism’ to ‘I strongly prefer peoplewithout autism to people with autism’ M = 4.89; SD = 0.94indicating a slight preference for people without autism topeople with autism.

Attitudes towards disabled persons. Two weeks aftercompleting the second version of the ATA, a subset of theundergraduate sample (n = 283) completed the Attitudestowards Disabled Persons (ATDP) online for additionalextra credit points. The ATDP measures attitudes towardspeople with disabilities via respondents’ self-report and isone of the most highly utilised scales in the field (Yuker,Block and Young, 1970). The ATDP is valid and reliableand somewhat susceptible to social desirability (Pruettand Chan, 2006). The ATDP has three different formats:ATDP-O, ATDP-A, ATDP-B. Form O and A were found tobe the most reliable and valid. In order to shorten the scale,we selected 14 questions most germane to the current studyfrom forms O (questions 2, 4, 6, 7, 13 and 17) and A(questions 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 24, 26 and 29). Sample questionsincluded ‘People with disabilities are just as intelligent aspeople without disabilities’ and ‘People with disabilities aremore emotional than people without disabilities’. All of theitems were reworded to use people first language from‘disabled persons’ to ‘people with disabilities’.

Behavioural intention. At the time of the ATDP adminis-tration, students were asked a question aimed at assessingtheir behavioural intention towards interacting with indi-viduals with disabilities. ‘Would you be interested in havingyour name and email provided to a local community orga-nization that utilizes students to work with individuals withdisabilities for potential contact in the Spring regardingvolunteering?’ Four options were coded: ‘1 = No – I am notinterested’ (26%), ‘2 = No – not at this time’ (48%), ‘3 =Yes– but not for this coming semester’ (5%), or ‘4 = Yes –please submit my name and email’ (20%). The responsesfrom the students were matched to earlier responses by aunique identifier. The survey was designed such that stu-dents who indicated that they wished to have their contactinformation provided to a volunteer coordinator providedthis information in an independent survey. Consequently,the names and emails from the students were separatedfrom all other responses. The contact information of stu-dents who indicated ‘3’ or ‘4’ and provided contact infor-mation was provided to a local direct service community

organisation as a list of students who were potentiallyinterested in volunteering. We do not know if the organisa-tion utilised the information and/or if any of the studentsprovided service to the organisation.

Disability attitudes implicit association test. At the con-clusion of the survey containing the ATA items, participantsindicated their interest in taking part in a related study.Approximately 8 weeks after the survey, 58 respondentsreceived additional extra credit for completing an implicitassociation test associated with disability attitudes in acomputer lab. Implicit attitudes are unacknowledged oroutside of awareness (Greenwald and Banaji, 1995), and themost common measure of implicit attitudes is the implicitassociation test (IAT) (Dasgupta, Greenwald and Banaji,2003). The IAT features several variants including one thatassesses implicit attitudes towards people with disabilities(Disability Attitude Implicit Association Test or DA-IAT).Pruett and Chan (2006) validated the DA-IAT and foundthat contact with persons with disabilities was the strongestcorrelate.

The participants for the current study arrived at a computerlab and completed the DA-IAT at the original sourcewebsite (projectimplicit.net) and reported the score pro-vided by the site on a sheet of paper with their uniqueidentifiers. Participants’ responses place them in one ofseven categories ranging from ‘strong automatic preferencefor abled people compared to disabled people’ to ‘strongautomatic preference for disabled people compared to abledpeople’. The 22 respondents for this study for whom we hadATA and DA-IAT scores showed very little variance andclustered into only two of the response categories – either‘strong’ or ‘moderate’ preference for abled people.

Participants who complete the DA-IAT match words andpictures. Participants first match symbols (e.g., signageimages such as the wheelchair icon associated with thedisability access or a cross-country skier image) to eitherdisabled or non-disabled. Then, participants matched wordsto either good or bad. Finally, they match symbols andwords to either disabled + good or non-disabled + badand vice versa. The matching of good words with disabledsymbols indicates incongruent associations whereas match-ing bad words with disabled symbols are consideredcongruent associations. The shorter the pause, the morestrongly variables are implicitly associated. Implicit attitudemeasures are often regarded as more accurate measuresof attitudes as compared with explicit attitudes and providethe benefit of no known ways for participants to manipulatethe results or trick the measure (Greenwald, Poehlman andUhlmann et al., 2009).

Known groups. A convenience sample of an ‘expert’ groupcomprised of direct service providers working with childrenwith autism at three different organisations completed the45-item ATA. Complete data was available from 22 directservice providers who were 90% female, 95% Caucasianand ranged in age from 19–45 with a mean age of 24. Theexperts were asked to estimate the percentage of their work


3© 2012 The Authors. Journal of Research in Special Educational Needs © 2012 NASEN

days they spend working with individual(s) with autism andthe mean response was 38%.

ResultsFactor analysisFirst, a confirmatory factor analysis was conducted on theresults from the 475-undergraduate sample according toMahoney’s (2008) three proposed subscales and our fourthsubscale based on knowledge of autism. A four-factor solu-tion yielded uninterpretable factors. Second, we conductedan exploratory factor analysis (SPSS principle axis factor-ing) on the same data. Utilising communalities, factorswith Eigen values over 1 and factor loadings over .25, we

determined three interpretable factors. A confirmatoryfactor analysis on the three-factor solution was conducted.Table 1 shows the factor loadings on the three factors rep-resenting Societal Attitudes (16 items), Personal Distance(5 items) and Knowledge (5 items). Items with negativefactor loadings or loadings below .25 were discarded. Theoverall variance explained with three-factor solution was.21. All the factor analyses used oblique rotation due toexpected associations among the subscales.

Reliability and subscale correlation analyses. Cronbach’salpha values depicting the level of internal consistency foreach of the subscales were as follows: Societal Attitudes

Table 1: Factor loadings and descriptive data for the three subscales of the Attitudes towards Autism Scale

Items listed in order of strength of factor loading

Factor 1:societalattitudes

Factor 2:knowledge

Factor 3:personaldistance Mean SD

FACTOR 1: People with autism should not engage in romantic relationships.R 0.769 1.53 0.57

People with autism should have the opportunity to go to college. 0.768 1.50 0.54

People with autism should not have children.R 0.668 1.82 0.68

People with autism should be institutionalised for their safety and others.R 0.635 1.46 0.54

If a facility to treat people with autism opened in my community, I would consider

moving out.R0.650 1.36 0.55

Individuals with autism are incapable of living on their own.R 0.609 1.84 0.65

I would be afraid to be around a person with autism.R 0.585 1.51 0.60

A person with autism is an emotional burden to his/her family.R 0.574 1.79 0.72

I would be comfortable sitting next to a person with autism in the same class. 0.547 1.79 0.63

A person with autism is a financial burden to his/her family.R 0.500 1.88 0.69

People with autism should be encouraged to marry someone with autism.R 0.480 1.71 0.57

People with autism are incapable of forming relationships and expressing affection.R 0.472 1.63 0.62

Children with autism should be fully integrated into mainstream classes.* 0.340 2.31 0.66

I would be uncomfortable hugging a person with autism.R 0.309 1.95 0.97

People with autism cannot understand other people’s feelings.R 0.282 1.91 0.67

Students with autism who are mainstreamed into regular classrooms are a distraction to

students without autism in that classroom.R0.278 2.15 0.55

FACTOR 2: People with autism require additional support to be successful in the work

place.R0.429 2.68 0.57

People with autism tend to be violent.R 0.392 2.14 0.55

Mainstreaming children with autism into regular education classrooms poses a safety risk

for children without autism in the same classroom.R0.317 1.97 0.53

People with autism need assistance communicating with others.R 0.311 2.44 0.58

All individuals with autism demonstrate repetitive behaviours, such as rocking or flapping

of arms or hands.R0.305 2.31 0.74

FACTOR 3: I would be comfortable sharing an office with a co-worker with autism. 0.786 2.39 0.51

I would be comfortable sitting next to a person with autism in a movie theatre.** 0.712 2.45 0.55

I would be comfortable having a person with autism living in the same building as me.** 0.591 2.40 0.52

I would be comfortable having a friend with autism.** 0.484 2.50 0.55

People with autism are capable of living normal lives (i.e., with a job, house, family, etc). 0.280 2.38 0.50

*Original item from Mahoney (2008).**Item modified from Mahoney (2008).RReverse coded.Four-point response scale of ‘1 strongly disagree to 4 strongly agree’.



(16 items = 0.86), Personal Distance (5 items = 0.71) andKnowledge (5 items = 0.47). Overall, a total scale from the26 items yielded an alpha of .77. However, the subscaleswere inconsistently related to one another (see Table 2).

Validity analysesTable 3 shows the correlations between the validity mea-sures, the three subscales of the ATA and the total 26-itemATA. Convergent validity was explored for the ATA throughcorrelations with the ATDP, the Preference for Persons withAutism Statement, DA-IAT and the Behavioral Intention.As expected, the subscales of the ATA all showed smallpositive correlations with the DA-IAT indicating that theexplicit scale is associated with implicit attitudes but alsosusceptible to social desirability. Factor 1 (societal atti-tudes) and Factor 2 (knowledge) both showed a mediumpositive association with the attitudes towards disabledpersons and the autism statement. There were no significantdifferences between the behavioural intention item and anyof the factors. In addition, the results from the expert groupwere compared with the results from the undergraduates toestablish known groups validity. As expected, the expertsindicated higher acceptance and more accurate knowledgethan did the undergraduates (see Table 4).

Final scaleBased on the factor analysis, reliability and validity analy-sis, we recommend the use of factor one – for a reliable andvalid measure of societal attitudes towards autism (SATA).Factor 1 already reflects some personal distance itemscaptured in factor 3. Consequently, we do not believe thatFactor 3 substantially adds to the literature. However,

Factor 2, Knowledge, needs additional research to provide areliable measure for the purpose of measuring knowledge ofautism. The reliability on the recommended final versionof the SATA is .86 with a range of 17–57, possible rangeof 16–64, normally distributed, M = 28.14, median = 28,SD = 6.30; n = 461).

DiscussionThis paper introduces a reliable and valid measure of soci-etal attitudes towards autism (SATA). The SATA was foundto have good internal consistency and construct validity.The validity analysis of the SATA indicates that attitudestowards autism are related but distinct from attitudestowards disabilities. Autism spectral disorders reflect a widerange of behaviours and outcomes, and autism is a cognitivedisorder with behavioural implications (Rice, 2009);whereas disability reflects a more physical and general cat-egory. A scale specific to the measurement of attitudestowards autism is necessary for researchers and practitio-ners whose intent is the study of autism. Overall, the SATAshows strong content, construct and known groups validityas indicated by several best practices in scale develop-ment (Bellini and Hopf, 2007; Robinson, Shaver andWrightsman, 1991). High scores on the SATA are consistentwith high scores on appropriate validity measures. Further-more, the SATA has preliminarily demonstrated the abilityto discriminate between expert and general college studentsamples.

The SATA showed a small positive correlation with theDA-IAT (.17) indicating that the explicit scale is associatedwith implicit attitudes. However, the DA-IAT is a moreglobal measure towards disabilities rather than autism, andthe DA-IAT focuses on physical disabilities. However, oursample was small for this analysis of implicit attitudes, andfurther study is needed. Given the small effect size of thecorrelation, we expect that, like many attitude scales, theSATA is susceptible to social desirability effects. Socialdesirability is the tendency to modify or censor attitudesand beliefs according to the respondents’ beliefs about theirlevel of acceptability to the researchers and/or society. Atti-tudes towards persons with disabilities have been shownto be susceptible to social desirability (Hergenrather andRhodes, 2007; Hofmann, Gawronski and Gschwendneret al., 2005; Pruett and Chan, 2006). However, attitudes

Table 2: Attitudes towards Autism Scale subscalefactor correlations

Factor 1 Factor 2 Factor 3

Factor 1 societal attitudes 1.00 0.43* -0.26*

Factor 2 knowledge 1.00 -0.07

Factor 3 personal distance 1.00

*P < 0.05.

Table 3: Correlations among the factors and associatedwith the attitudes towards autism validity

ATDPAutism

statement DA-IATBehavioural

intention

Societal attitudes

factor 1

0.45* 0.53* 0.17 -0.22

Knowledge factor 2 0.35* 0.26* 0.39 -0.01

Personal distance

factor 3

0.05 -0.06 0.20 0.10

ATA26 0.49* 0.53* 0.33 -0.16

Note. *P < 0.05 – higher scores on all measures indicate more acceptanceof individuals with disabilities.ATA, Attitudes towards Autism Scale; ATDP, Attitudes towards DisabledPersons; DA-IAT, Disability Attitude Implicit Association Test.

Table 4: Expert and undergraduate comparisons on thefactors of the Attitudes towards Autism Scale

Experts(n = 22)

mean (SD)

Undergraduates(n = 473)

mean (SD)t values

(df = 493)

Social attitudes

(Factor 1)

54.38 (4.47) 28.14 (5.85)* 20.27**

Knowledge (Factor 2) 13.50 (1.60) 11.53 (1.74)* 5.29**

Personal distance

(Factor 3)

17.90 (1.80) 12.13 (1.80)* 14.73**

*P < 0.05; **P < 0.01.



often reflect both real and exaggerated acceptance towardspreviously misunderstood or negatively assessed groupswhen societies experience significant social change (Banajiand Heiphetz, 2010).

The two subscales that showed variable validity and reli-ability deserve additional attention. Although personal dis-tance items are reflected in the SATA, the factor analysisindicated a distinct factor for several of the distance items,and the subscale did not yield the same pattern of validitycorrelations that the SATA yielded. We suspect that thepersonal distance items more accurately reflect an indivi-dual’s personal willingness to regularly and closely inter-face with individuals with autism. The SATA reflects moreabstracted concepts than personal willingness. Conse-quently, the personal distance factor shows no consistentassociations with the validity measures that would indicatean attitude structure. It is possible that this subscale couldbe valid for individuals with consistent contact with indi-viduals with autism. It is not surprising that the knowledgesubscale yielded low internal consistency. Autism is a dis-order that is complex due to its spectrum nature. No twoindividuals are exactly alike, which makes for discrepanciesin agreement between professionals. An individual’s levelof knowledge is likely dependent on how each person gen-eralises the symptoms and behaviours of the individualswith autism he/she knows. Furthermore, the assessment ofknowledge towards autism is further frustrated by the largediscrepancy between popular and scientific beliefs (e.g., theeffects of a gluten-free diet or the debunked vaccine hypo-theses) and the fundamental lack of knowledge/agreementover the etiology of autism (Godlee, Smith and Marcovitch,2011; Offit, 2010; University of Rochester Medical Center,2010). Knowledge measures exist for subgroups who sharea common set of (e.g., speech pathologists; Cascella andColella, 2004); however, developing a scale to measureknowledge of autism for a general population will be mul-tifaceted and challenging. Further study in this area isneeded to develop a reliable knowledge of autism scale.

Finally, none of the subscales of the ATA were correlatedwith the behavioural intention measure. Although attitude-behaviour associations tend to be low (Banaji and Heiphetz,2010), we suspect that our behavioural intention measurewas not sensitive enough to accurately assess intention andinvolved a behaviour too far ahead in the future and toovaguely defined.

Uses and limitations of the studyThe generalisability of the SATA is potentially limited. Foruse with college populations, the SATA requires additionalresearch with more diverse college respondents. Moreimportantly, in order for the scale to be shown as reliableand valid for use with a general population, the scalerequires additional vetting across participants of varyingage, ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds, educationlevels and geographic placement. Current research ondemographic factors associated with autism do not appearto yield any predictable variants beyond gender (Bertoglioand Hendren, 2009); consequently, significant demographicvariations in attitudes may not be found.

Application of the SATA will help to further understandcurrent attitudes towards autism by providing researchersand practitioners a better understanding of the public’sorientation towards autism. The SATA may be used inconjunction with programs to increase public knowledge,awareness and acceptance of autism, and individual’sattitudes towards autism. The SATA may be useful inmonitoring attitude over time or in response to awarenesscampaign. The scale may be helpful in initiating conversa-tions with individuals interested in working with individu-als with autism such as pre-service teachers for specialeducation (e.g., Park et al., 2010).

Overall, the rapid increase in autism and the research asso-ciated with society’s response to autism indicate a need fora reliable and valid measure for the assessment of indivi-dual’s attitudes towards autism. The items that comprise theSATA were drawn from recurrent themes in the literatureand the experience of those of us who have worked closedalongside individuals with autism. We encourage additionalresearch with the SATA to gain further insight into corre-lates and patterns of attitudes towards autism.

AcknowledgementThis research was supported in part by an undergraduateresearch grant from the University of Wisconsin – LaCrosse.

Address for correspondenceBetsy Morgan,Department of Psychology,University of Wisconsin,1725 State Street,La Crosse, WI 54601,USA.Email: [email protected].

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Piecing together the puzzle: development of the Societal Attitudes towards Autism (SATA) scale