Exploratory factor analysis of the chilean deafness attitude scale

ABSTRACT

Negative attitudes mean a barrier for People with Disability (PwD), but attitudes towards Deaf people are structurally different from the rest of the PwD. The aim of this study is to evaluate the factorial structure and internal reliability of the Attitudes towards Deafness Scale (ADS) applied in health professionals from Concepcion, Chile. The ADS was translated to Spanish and back-translated to English, then reviewed by public health experts, and a pilot application was carried out to 15 health professional to make final modifications. The Chilean ADS version was applied to 182 health professional from primary care centers and academics working in health schools. Reliability analysis with estimation of the Cronbach's alpha coefficient, and exploratory factor analysis were made. The data presented adequate values to perform exploratory factor analysis (KMO=0.73; Bartlett's sphericity test p <0.00001). A maximum likelihood extraction method and a Quartimax rotation method with Kaiser standardization were used for a four-factor model, in which 11 items presented loads of less than 0.5, so the final model was left with 11 items. A Cronbach's alpha coefficient of 0.70 was determined in the final model, with an alpha of 0.77 for the first factor, 0.55 for the second, 0.77 for the third, and 0.61 for the fourth. The exploratory factor analysis suggested a four-dimensional structure for ADS Chilean version. The four subscales and the scale in general presented an adequate Cronbach's alpha, suggesting acceptable internal consistency