Biasing effects of physical disability, race, and job skill level on assessment of applicants

Abstract

We are deeply indebted to the two anonymous reviewers and the Editor for their painstaking efforts and the extremely meticulous comments given to us during the entire review process of this paper. A thousand thanks to all three of you.The study reported here employed a 2 (wheelchair-bound versus non-wheelchairbound) x 2 (Caucasian versus Chinese) x 2 (programmer versus computer operator) full factorial experiment design to examine the effects of evaluator biases on the perceived employability of job applicants. Results based on 640 evaluation reports showed that evaluators tended to accord higher employability ratings to job applicants with apparent physical disabilities and those with a higher level of job skill. The positive bias in favor of applicants with disabilities in terms of perceived employability was greater for Caucasian than for Chinese job applicants. These results suggested that there might be race-disability interactions in the evaluation process. Implications for research on employment discrimination were discussed.

Do Persons with Disabilities Act (2008) and Organizational Culture Influence Managerial Intention to Hire Persons with Disabilities?: The Malaysian Perspective

“…The extant literature (e.g., Bagshaw 2006;Disability Homepage 2007;Neufeldt & Albright 1998;Perry 2002) indicates that the unemployment rate of PWDs is at least twice that of non-disabled people. For instance, the unemployment rate of PWDs in Singapore is reported to be as high as 53.3 percent (Lim & Ng 2001). In some other countries (e.g., Latin America, Caribbean, and Argentina), unemployment among PWDs is as high as 80 percent (United Nations 2006).…”