Asked 180 secondary school teachers to respond to a Thurstone-type scale measuring their view of the degree of psychological incapacitation in 4 hypothetical pupil cases. Variations in methods of describing pupils, assigned randomly to the Ss, were (a) diagnostic labels only, (b) behavioral descriptions only, and (c) behavioral descriptions with diagnostic labels affixed. In addition, designations in half of the cases in each variation were changed from masculine to feminine. A 4 * 3 * 2 analysis for repeated measures indicated that when diagnostic labels were used, mean scores on the incapacitation scale were significantly higher (p = .005) than when descriptions alone where used. No significant overall difference in mean scores was found between the 2 pupil sexes. (18 ref)

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No abstract