Evaluating the Effectiveness of Disability Awareness Programs on Influencing University Students’ Attitudes

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The article is an analysis of empirical survey data about a 10 week intensive training program with university students to improve attitudes to people with disabilities. It is presented well. The problem with the article is that it is unclear how it adds the existing evidence. As the paper acknowledges it is a one off intervention with a small sample, measuring only immediate rather than sustained change. The evidence about this type of intervention and research is well established. The gaps suggested in the background p4 have already been addressed in the literature.

A potential contribution is to redraft the article (title, background, discussion) to demonstrate why Jordan is a different context to the current evidence and how that might be generalisable to other countries. I’m not sure what that angle is, but maybe the authors can consider it.

The background and method are well presented. The method or elsewhere should mention the authors positionality (disability) and how people with disabilities were involved as researchers or advisors and if not justify why not.

The results and discussion are presented well demonstrating the benefit of a prolonged multi-activity intervention.

I suggest replace ‘individual/s’ with person/people for respectful language that does not objectify the participants.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,
Thank you very much for your time, effort, and thoughtful feedback on our manuscript. We truly appreciate the depth and clarity of your comments, which have greatly contributed to improving the quality and focus of the paper. Please find our detailed responses to all your remarks in the attached file. We are sincerely grateful for your valuable insights.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The manuscript is highly engaging. The topic of including people with disabilities in higher education remains a topic of ongoing relevance and importance. I am certain that this work makes a contribution to existing knowledge and literature.

My suggestions are as follows:

Introduction
I believe this section could be further strengthened by incorporating findings from previous studies that examine the social barriers that students with disabilities face within the university environment. Additionally, references to the dynamics of interaction between students with and without disabilities could provide valuable context. Such an approach would offer a more cohesive transition to the central focus and findings of the present study.

Materials and Methods
It would be particularly useful to present the tool you developed in a table. This table could include a description of the development process, the elements adopted from the relevant literature and other studies, as well as those that were ultimately excluded, along with the criteria for their exclusion. Highlighting the components that were retained in the final version of the tool would also enhance clarity and transparency.

References
Kindly ensure that all references are formatted consistently according to the journal’s guidelines. Please include complete bibliographic information for each source, such as reference no. 33 appears to be incomplete. Additionally, there seems to be some confusion between references 29 and 30, which should be clarified. Furthermore, if you wish to include DOIs, please ensure they are provided for all the references. It is recommended to use DOI links in the standardized URL format (e.g., https://doi.org/…) for consistency and accessibility.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,
Thank you very much for your constructive and encouraging comments on our manuscript. Your thoughtful feedback helped us significantly improve the clarity and structure of our work, particularly in refining the introduction, clarifying the scale development, and ensuring consistency in our references. We have addressed all your points in detail in the attached response document. We sincerely appreciate your time, attention, and support in strengthening the quality of our study.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Thank you for the opportunity to review this paper. 

The researchers developed and implemented a training program to improve attitudes about disabilities in a cohort of Jordanian university students. The course was effective. Students who completed 10 weeks of training did better on a post-test about disability and other equity issues than a control group. Gender did not seem to affect how much people learned about disability in the course.

The work is interesting. It is important to improve student attitudes and practice about disabilities. The researchers argue that this is especially important in Jordan where there have been many disability awareness initiatives, but social attitudes remain poor. This is certainly not unique to Jordan.

I suggest the paper makes a valuable contribution to the literature and should be edited for publication. I have several suggestions. I keep my suggestions mostly ‘high level’ to orient a re-draft that will improve the paper overall.

I call these minor revisions, but they need a bit of work. That work mostly involves making it shorter. I hope this will improve the paper. 

Length: The paper is very long. There are fully 3 pages of introduction. The background explores global disability inequities, social changes, attitudes about disability, rights, Jordan’s disability programs, more about social attitudes within Jordan, and the researchers’ own experiences in teaching careers, before describing a problem (we don’t know much about how disability attitudes can be changed among Jordanian university students.)

This section should be shortened. A story about: i) disability attitudes are slow to change, both globally and in Jordan ii) university students are an important group who could drive community attitudes, but iii) we don’t know much about how attitudes can be changed among this group, iv) we aimed to develop, implement and test a training program about disability attitudes. Elaborate on one or two important themes if necessary but make it a lot shorter. For example, the context about Jordan’s programs about disability is interesting and important but could just a sentence or two.

The results could also be shortened. Where a table presents specific data but no effects were observed, it isn’t (in my view) necessary to repeat the significance value in the text. For example, all the first paragraph after table 1 could be replaced with ‘there we no group or gender differences (see table 1). The section about the disability scale is fascinating, but long.

Again, the section about the training program might be better as a table with rows about each of the three parts, and the main themes in a column. Delete the ‘bibliography’ part; it invites a fuller section about how the content itself was developed. I think it is adequate to say you consulted widely about what the contents should be, and then developed the course based on the literature. Comment whether persons with disability were involved in the development or implementation of the program, or perhaps consider it in the limitations section if that was not possible.

It is not clear why the both-gender post test mean in table 3 is different from the ‘adjusted’ means in table 5. I suggest you mention briefly how and why the adjustment was made, delete table 5, and add the adjusted mean 2-gender mean to table 3. The difference after adjustment is trivially different to the unadjusted mean so I don’t see why it needs a whole table.

There is no point repeating there is no gender difference at line 372 and for each of the dimensions, you have already explained the means being described are for both genders combined. This whole section after line 350 could be shortened to ‘most of the overall difference was for disability awareness and awareness of diversity, not human rights awareness.

The discussion also needs to be reduced by about half. What we have learned is quite straightforward. The course helped students improve their knowledge about disability and diversity, but maybe less about human rights.

‘Special needs’ concepts are introduced about half way in to the discussion, and form much of the conclusion. This is probably my major concern with the paper. The results told us nothing about special education, and we can’t conclude adding this topic to university curriculum is a good thing. I think you demonstrate that if more people do the same course as your experimental group, they will probably improve their disability attitudes. You will need to acknowledge that your selection criteria required people to volunteer for the course and complete it over 10 weeks with no credit or other benefit. That takes quite a commitment, and probably reflects a sample of people with an interest and curiosity about disability, even if they don’t have a direct involvement or personal experience of it. The conclusion should focus on something like ‘university students who participate in a 10 week course improve their attitudes. A short course among students is one important strategy to improve disability inequities and opportunities to scale it up and refine it should be explored’.

Finally, I have not commented on ‘disability language’. There are a few places throughout where terms are used that would not be appropriate where I live and work. However, I know disability language varies from place to place, and that English is probably not the Authors’ first language. I am sure the authors know and are using the most appropriate English translation of disability terminology used in Jordan.

 

 

 

 

 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,
We would like to express our sincere appreciation for your comprehensive and thoughtful review of our manuscript. Your detailed insights and constructive feedback have been immensely helpful in refining the clarity, focus, and structure of our work. We have carefully addressed each of your comments in the attached response, and we thank you once again for your time, professionalism, and valuable contributions to improving the quality of our study.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The authors have responded to the suggestions fully.