Measuring Attitudes Cross-Culturally

Global research. Most of the past research on public attitudes has been in developed countries (Crisp, Gelder, Rix, Meltzer, & Rowlands, 2000), although increasingly, investigators have recognized a need to measure stigma and its effects in less developed nations as well (Ellsberg, Pena, Herrera, Winkvist, & Kullgren, 1999; Link, 2002; Mohit, 1999). For example, several large studies have documented that attitudes toward mental illness are different in populations around the globe (Thompson, Stuart, Bland, Arboleda-Florez, Warner, Dickson, 2002).

Most studies documenting stigma related to stuttering have focused on North America, Western Europe, and Australia (e.g., reviews by Bloodstein & Ratner, 2008; Manning, 2010; St. Louis, 2005), although pilot studies using experimental versions of the POSHA-S have documented similar attitudes in a number of other areas, such as Brazil, Turkey, Bulgaria, and Russia (Ozdemir, Topbas, St. Louis, & Ege, 2008; St. Louis, Andrade, Georgieva, & Troudt, 2005; St. Louis, Filatova, Coskun, Ozdemir, Topbas, Georgieva, McCaffrey, & George, 2010; St. Louis, Ozdemir, & Topbas, 2009); Cameroon (St. Louis & Roberts, 2010); South Africa and Nepal (Knudsen, Kathard, St. Louis, & Shrestha, 2004); Kuwait (Abdalla & Al-Saddah, 2009; Al-Khaledi, Lincoln, McCabe, Packman, & Alshatti, 2009). Other questionnaires have also been used to document stuttering stereotypes in China (e.g., Jin, 2001; Van Borsel, Verniers, & Bouvry, 1999)