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Perceived Stigma Among Serbian Parents of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder and Children with Physical Disabilities: Validation of a New Instrument

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Abstract

Limited research has been done to explore parental perception of stigma. The present study developed the Parental Perceptions of Public Attitudes Scale to examine perceived stigma among Serbian parents of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and children with physical disabilities (PD). The convenience sample consisted of 82 participants. A confirmatory factor analysis was done to validate the scale and a 9-item solution clustered into two factors proved to be the best model. Overall, the parents reported a low-to-moderate level of perceived stigma. Parents of children with ASD reported higher degree of perceived stigma compared to the parents of children with PD. The scale was useful in measuring parental perceived stigma and could be used in other Eastern European countries.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank parents and organizations who participated in the study. Also, many thanks to anonymous referee for a wonderful review and Dr. Shari Daisy for a final proofread. The research findings presented in our paper are part of Marija Čolić’s doctoral dissertation. No external funding was received for the research reported in the paper.

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  1. Marija Čolić

    Present address: Department of Special Education, University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1776 University Avenue, Honolulu, HI, 96822, USA

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  1. Faculty of Special Education and Rehabilitation, University of Belgrade, Visokog Stevana 2, 11 000, Belgrade, Serbia

    Marija Čolić & Ivona Milačić-Vidojević

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  1. Marija Čolić
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  2. Ivona Milačić-Vidojević
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Contributions

Both authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analyses were performed by MC. The first draft of the manuscript was written by MC and IMV commented and revised previous versions of the manuscript. Both authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Marija Čolić.

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Marija Čolić is currently a doctoral candidate at University of Belgrade, Serbia, and instructor at University of Hawaii at Manoa, Hawaii.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Appendix

Appendix

See Table 5.

Table 5 The percentages for each item from the PPPAS, presented separately for each group, and for a full sample
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Čolić, M., Milačić-Vidojević, I. Perceived Stigma Among Serbian Parents of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder and Children with Physical Disabilities: Validation of a New Instrument. J Autism Dev Disord 51, 501–513 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-020-04559-4

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