This project will involve a collaborative endeavor between scholars from the United States and the People's Republic of China to study the effects of stigma associated with behaviorally driven health disorders on employment-related discrimination. People with three such disorders will be the focus of this study: psychotic disorders, alcohol abuse disorders, and HIV/AIDS. The study will examine the attitudes and behaviors of employers (compared to the general public) using probability samples at three urban sites: Chicago, Beijing, and Hong Kong. Central research questions include why employers endorse stigmatizing beliefs about these disorders, how these attitudes result in withholding work opportunities, and how social and political variables mitigate employer attitudes and actions. First, intensive qualitative interviews will be conducted with a diverse sample of employers at the three sites (N =360, 120/city) to explore the relevant attitudes, perceptions, and behaviors related to hiring people with behavioral health conditions. Results from this study will help inform a survey-based quantitative study, which will test social cognitive models of employer perceptions of people with behaviorally driven health conditions using a vignette assessment strategy and factorial survey design (N = 900, 300/city). This will include examination of employer attributions of causal responsibility for the disorder; attributions about the stability and recoverability of the disorder; concerns about dangerousness; concerns about incompetence; and concerns about contagion. A third study will replicate the quantitative survey on samples representing the general public in Hong Kong, Beijing, and Chicago (N=3,000, 1,000/city). Finally, the effects of socio-cultural factors (e.g., individualist vs. collectivist cultural orientation) on employer attitudes and behavior vis-a-vis people with health-related conditions will be examined. Data from this study will be especially important for the development of future stigma-change programs.
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