Egan, P. M., & Giuliani, T. A. (2009). Unaccommodating attitudes: Perceptions of students as a function of academic accommodation use and test performance . North American Journal of Psychology , 11 (3), 487–500. http://najp.us/

Accommodations were not specified. This study focused on undergraduate students’ perceptions of students with disabilities who were accessing accommodations. While no accommodations were analyzed, extra time, access to another student's lecture notes, and receiving tests in verbal (rather than written) form were mentioned.

Sixty-nine undergraduate students attending a liberal arts postsecondary institution in Texas (U.S.) participated. All students were recruited from the institution's on-campus housing. Participants were aged 18 to 27 and self-identified as white (73.5%), African-American (1.5%), Hispanic-American (11.8%), multi-racial (7.4%), "other" (1.5%), or did not report their race (4.4%).

The impact of the following factors on participants’ perceptions of students with disabilities was examined: a) whether a student with disabilities received or declined accommodations and b) whether the student performed better or worse than the study participant on a test. Participants received a packet containing a cover story, questions about participant demographic information, a filler scenario, and the experimental scenario that described a hypothetical student. The hypothetical student either received or declined accommodations, and they performed either better or worse than the participant did on a test. The final page of the packet included a manipulation check, asking participants to recall how the hypothetical student performed compared to their own score, the type of disability the student had, and whether the student used accommodations on the test.

The hypothetical students were perceived to be less intelligent and respectable when they used accommodations as opposed to declining them. When students outperformed participants on the test, they were perceived more negatively when they used accommodations than when they declined them. When students did not perform better than the participant on the test, they were perceived similarly regardless of whether they received or declined accommodations. Researchers concluded that even though accommodations are designed to improve student performance, when this improvement happens, these students may be judged by their peers and suffer negative social consequences.