Adapting a Widely Used Children's Disability Attitudes Measure: Validation of the Maryland East‐African Children's Attitudes Towards Disabilities (MEACAD) Scale

ABSTRACT Background The Chedoke‐McMaster Attitudes Towards Children with Handicaps (CATCH), a 36‐item scale, is widely used to assess children's attitudes toward peers with disabilities. While recognized for its strong validity and reliability, it was developed nearly four decades ago in Canada for children aged 9 to 13 and no longer fully aligns with diverse geographical and cultural contexts today. We examine children's attitudes toward children with disabilities in Kampala, Uganda, using a culturally‐tailored, shorter, and updated version of the CATCH scale. We establish the construct validity of the scale by testing three hypotheses grounded in existing literature. Methods We cross‐sectionally examined the attitudes of 375 children aged 6 to 9 years in Kampala in the Summer of 2024. Findings Through rigorous scale validation steps, we offer a modernized, age‐appropriate, and concise 15‐item adaptation—one of the first in the East African context. The revised scale demonstrated strong construct validity along with good internal consistency. Conclusions Future research should evaluate the scale's psychometric properties across broader age groups, geographical regions, and socioeconomic contexts to enhance its robustness as a modern multi‐dimensional scale for measuring children's attitudes toward peers with disabilities. We introduce the Maryland‐East African Children's Attitudes toward Disabilities (MEACAD) scale.