Running head: ARTICLE CRITIQUE

Article Critique Ryan Keesee Georgia Southern University

ARTICLE CRITIQUE Title and Abstract Both the title and the abstract are fairly straightforward. They provide you with the question being asked, those surveyed and a quick glimpse of the results. I do believe simply stating, individuals with intellectual disability, seems vague. There are various types of intellectual disability with varying degrees of severity. The manner in which this is stated leaves you to assume all intellectual disabilities are being considered. This introduction; however, is very comprehensive and brief making it relatively simple to understand. The abstract notes significant findings without directly mentioning what they are, which is entices the reader to continue. Literature Review

The literature review begins with a quick layout of the status quo on this particular topic. It educates the reader on the three current Postsecondary Education Program (PSE) models. Information presented throughout the review is within a decade. General assumptions are seldom made while the work of Neubert and Moon (2006) is utilized frequently. The overall use of sources is correct all though some references, personally, seem irrelevant or skew from the original purpose. There is a discussion from Eisenman et. al. that notes individuals with intellectual disabilities (ID) were engaged in approximately five different community activities per week. The significance of this is not discussed and its actual relevance to the original topic is small. The review proves to be comprehensive through multiple examples of qualitative and quantitative research. The research presented supports the questions purposed from the abstract. Some research provided almost forecasts positive findings.

ARTICLE CRITIQUE The hypotheses purposed are very evident and all of them are considerably measureable. Although, the literature review does provide multiple perspectives concerning the subject, nothing is provided in concerns to the actual students with ID. Methodology Participants for this study were collected by means of convenience sampling through an internet email to 7,149 undergraduate students in the southeast. The survey was through surveymonkey.com which provided a link in the email for students to click. Submissions from the same URL were rejected to ensure respondents could only submit once. The return for the survey was very high with a result of 572, 385 female and 183 male. Although I would not

consider the results generalizable due to such a large difference in participation between females and males, there is a very close distribution of college year between freshmen, sophomores, juniors and seniors. The questionnaire utilized by SurveyMonkey allowed the researchers to gather specific information. The questionnaire was reviewed by three authors and a test-retest assessment was utilized. The final survey had 17 items that covered five categories. Some items measured awareness of PSE programs while others measured attitudes of ID students which is the focus of the study. Cronbachs alpha is utilized to measure internal consistency for the items concerning attitudes. Through this, strong internal consistency is calculated with a result of .87. The review of validity and reliability along with the significant response lead me to believe the survey was conducted successfully. Although some of the items tested skew from the original focus of the survey they still hold significance. The website utilized, SurveyMonkey, also allows for confidentiality of responses and automatic analysis of data.

ARTICLE CRITIQUE In measuring the attitudes towards students with ID the five items concerning this were

collapsed creating an average attitude variable by summing the five attitude items and dividing by the number of the items. This served as the studys criterion variable from which independent sample t-tests were performed to measure mean differences in attitudes. In doing so, the researchers allowed themselves to gather information that could possibly influence the participants attitudes towards students with ID. The final item on the test also gave respondents the opportunity to comment allowing for more qualitative findings. I think some items utilized in this could have been changed to account for other factors later discussed. I do believe the t-tests allowed for significant findings. Results The results presented support the hypothesis that knowledge of PSE programs or participants could be associated with more positive attitudes than students without. The same is true for positive attitudes being most prominent with women and young educated students. Although most of the survey is depicted in a table, I was unable to see some of the statistics discussed such as the mean for students who had family members or acquaintances with ID. Table 2 could have also been organized differently as well for easier reading. Some of the items also gave the option of not sure which I believe to be unnecessary for questions such as item number 1. You can, however, see the significant overall result of students with a positive attitude toward inclusion of students with ID. To an extent, I believe the results to be trustworthy, though all figures were calculated by SurveyMonkey without review by any of the authors. The main red flag is the fact that they utilize convenience sampling which may not represent the larger population.

ARTICLE CRITIQUE Discussion This section automatically recognizes that because of the use of convenience sampling, the results may not be representative of the target population. It also notes that attitudinal data were negatively skewed meaning the results may not be normative. The t-tests utilized though allow for analysis of differences between groups. Although women outnumbered men, male participants still displayed positive attitudes towards students with ID. The discussion section begins as a summary of the results and does not provide too much creative thought. It does open to some possible faults and research focuses. It notes that the five items utilized to measure

attitude are not sufficient in validating constructs. This is very relevant because construct validity serves as the best representation of attitudes and highlights the major question of the study, What are undergraduate attitudes about inclusion for students with intellectual disabilities? They also question the external validity of the survey. As noted earlier those surveyed were only from the southeast of the country. Further exploring this could allow more understanding as to whether or not positive attitudes towards inclusion are normative amongst undergraduate students. The information presented also does little to discuss the attitudes of faculty who have considerable influence on whether or not their class supports PSE. Once again, as noted in in the literature review, no information is presented in concerns to those students with ID. This also calls to question the degree of intellectual disability being discussed. This question went unanswered throughout the article and overall these factors should be considered especially for the matter of inclusion. This article is certainly thought provoking and was executed reasonably well. Overall though, I believe certain considerations such as those just mentioned wouldve allowed it to be more significant.

ARTICLE CRITIQUE References Westling, D., Kelley, K., Cain, B., & Prohn, S. (2013). College students attitudes about an inclusive postsecondary education program for individuals with intellectual disability. Education and training in autism and developmental disabilities, 48(3), 306-319.