The following is an excerpt of the intervention methodology. For more information, please see the full text of the article on the publisher's website or through your institution's library.

Independent Variable/Stimuli

As such, the two experimental conditions featured intergroup communication between disabled and non-disabled individuals while the control group featured communication between nondisabled individuals. [...] Each of the three stimuli clips were edited from the medical drama, Private Practice [...].

Dependent Variables

Attitudes toward people with disabilities. Attitudes towards PWD were measured using the attitudes towards disabled persons scale. [...] The ATDP-O is a 20-item measure where respondents indicate the extent of their disagreement or agreement on a 6-item Likert-type scale where “+3” represents the strongest level of agreement and “-3” represents the strongest level of disagreement.

Willingness to interact. In order to measure willingness to interact, a modified version of the social distance scale as used in Esses and Dovidio (2002) was applied. [...] The modified version [...] was a 12-item measure which asked respondents to indicate their responses towards Black People on a 7-point Likert-type scale. [...]

Intergroup anxiety. In this analysis, intergroup anxiety was measured using the instrument utilized in Stephan and Stephan (1985), modified to analyze intergroup anxiety toward PWD. The purpose of this measure is to determine the affective states that a participant reports while imagining being the only in-group member participating in communication with multiple outgroup members.

Procedures

Recruitment Recruitment for this analysis took place via in-class announcements in courses offered by the College of Communications at California State University, Fullerton. [...]

Research Sessions During the week of April 15th – 19th 2019, the PI conducted 12 research sessions in an audio/visual capable room in the library of California State University, Fullerton. [...] The PI then turned the main lights off and began one of three stimulus conditions. Upon completion of viewing the stimulus, the PI turned the main lights on and directed the participants’ attention to a link that was used to access an anonymous version of the survey instrument. Participants were informed that they could take the survey on any digital device that they possessed and were also offered the opportunity to complete a paper survey if they preferred. Online surveys were administered via Qualtrics, and a large majority of participants opted to complete the survey online. Participants were instructed that their participation would conclude upon their completion of the survey instrument and that they could leave upon completion unless they had any questions for the PI.