DEKALB, Ill. — Could changing the wording on disability disclosure forms encourage more workers to disclose their disabilities? A recent study explored this idea.
“Self-disclosure is an opportunity for employees to show their more authentic selves at work, which may lead to psychological benefits in a supportive work environment,” said Alessia Santuzzi, a psychology professor at Northern Illinois University.
Santuzzi and a team of researchers from NIU and the Illinois Institute of Technology surveyed 1,600 employed adults who completed an online survey, each of which was given one of four versions of a voluntary disability report.
The original form has three answer options:
Yes, I have a disability. No, I don’t have a disability. I don’t want to answer.
Using this format, 20 percent of respondents disclosed that they have a disability. When the word “disability” was replaced with “applicable condition,” 29 percent of respondents disclosed that they have a disability. “The other two response options that replaced the word ‘disability’ also elicited higher disclosure rates, although they were not statistically significant,” the NIU press release stated.
“Terms like ‘qualifying conditions’ may encourage respondents to think more broadly about limitations that may affect their job performance and subsequently reveal these limitations even if they don’t use the label ‘disability,'” study author Alessia Santuzzi, a psychology professor at NIU, said in a statement. “Even when employees highly value their disability as part of their identity, many use a different term to describe that part of themselves in the workplace.”
She added, “When employees are not given the opportunity to report in a way that aligns with their own definition, they cannot experience authenticity. For many employees, the word ‘disability’ does not reflect how they define their own differences in health, functioning, and abilities.” The study was published online in the journal Group & Organization Management.