To tell or not to tell; disability disclosure and job application outcomes

Journal of Rehabilitation, Oct-Dec, 2003 by Veronica Pearson, Nelson Yip, Eva Lo

The logic of job selection involves elimination of candidates until only one remains but the expectation is that this inevitably discriminatory process should be fair. Among people with a disability and professional rehabilitation counselors there is a widespread conviction that this is not the case for jobseekers with a disability. There can be no real doubt that people with a disability experience vocational discrimination (Marchioro & Bartels, 1994; Stone & Colella, 1996; Tsang, Lam, Ng & Leung, 2000). The reasons for this are multiple, interactive and complex but a major contributing factor for this exclusion has to do with employers whose negative attitudes are kept in place by myths regarding people with a disability as workers and a desire to avoid 'risky hires' (Gilbride, Stensrud, Ehlers, Evans & Peterson, 2000). Many studies have set out to research this phenomenon but it has proven very difficult to design research that takes place in an organizational environment of decision making about real jobs, involving real job applicants, despite an acknowledgment that this is desirable (Nordstrom, Williams, & LeBreton 1996; Raza & Carpenter, 1987; Stone & Colella, 1996;).

One of the major difficulties is that in a laboratory situation there is a very high risk of eliciting a socially desirable response. This appears to have significantly affected the outcome in the work of Christman and Slaten, (1991) and Nordstrom, Huffaker, and Williams (1998) neither of whom mentions this as a possibility that could have affected the outcome of their studies. Nordstrom et al. (1998) used university employees with hiring experience to simulate making decisions about who they would or would not hire for a junior administrative post based on written material and videos of psychology undergraduate students role playing applicants with and without disabilities. Participants were also asked to rate their comfort levels in interacting with people with a disability and in their knowledge of the relevant employment legislation. Results demonstrated that the participants consistently rated the 'applicants' with a disability higher than those without. There was a positive relationship between those reporting a higher comfort level interacting with people with a disability and evaluation of the 'applicants' with a disability. The work of Christman and Slaten (1991) was similar. Managers were asked to watch simulated videos of interviews and then rate three female 'applicants' in terms of their employment and management potential. The managers were also asked to fill out a questionnaire measuring their attitudes towards people with a disability. They consistently rated the two 'applicants' with a disability higher on the employment and management scales than the 'applicant' without a disability. Mean scores of these managers on the attitudes towards people with a disability scale were higher than published norms.

Laboratory techniques vary but there are examples of using students to role play both the interviewers and the interviewees (Millington, Leirer & Abadie, 2000); using video segments of a person pretending to be a wheelchair user (Marchioro & Bartels, 1994); simulating other disabilities (Christman & Slaten, 1991; Nordstrom et al. 1998); and audiotapes of a simulated interview (Stone & Sawatzki, 1980). A rare exception in the literature is a study by Hayes and Macan (1997) that utilized a design that involved students with a disability applying for real summer jobs. Their goal was to 'examine whether a common integrated model of interviewer hiring decisions developed from research using fully able samples could adequately explain recruiter ratings of applicants with disabilities'(p. 168). In other words were recruiters using the same yard sticks to measure able-bodied applicants and those with a disability? Hayes and Macan found for both groups that self-presentation and the management of information about ones' employability played a significant part in explaining hirer's ratings. Measures of attractiveness were less important in rating applicants with a disability than was the case for able-bodied applicants. Interestingly, rating qualifications was not significantly related to interviewers' hiring decisions for people with a disability, but was significantly related for the able-bodied. Overall, a review of the literature in this area demonstrates how hard it is to utilize unobtrusive measures of actual behavior (Stone & Colella, 1996) in an experimental design.

Managing what Goffman (1963) has called 'discreditable' conditions involves the disclosure and management of information about the disability. Who, what, and when to tell are important decisions to make. By careful information management, social rejection and enacted stigma can be minimized (Gray, 2002). One of the most important applications of these skills is in the process of applying for a job. One of the dilemmas that people with a disability face when doing this is whether they should reveal their disability in the letter of application. The arguments for and against are well known: if the letter makes their disability clear they may not be offered an interview. If the disability is only revealed at the interview it may cause embarrassment and ultimately distress to both parties and the applicant may not get the job. The research described in this article set out to create an experimental design that utilized decisions made by typical employers in Hong Kong and that tested the hypotheses a) applicants for a job who made it plain in their application letter that they had a disability would be offered fewer job interviews than an identical applicant without a disability; and b) that employers differentiate between categories of disability. The strategy adopted was for the research team to respond to job advertisements with letters of application and to note which letters received a positive response--an offer of an interview.