College Students' Willingness to Seek Help for their Learning Disabilities

Abstract

Eighty-six university students with learning disabilities (LDs) completed measures of self-esteem and of perceptions of their LDs. In addition, they rated their willingness to seek help from academic services in response to two experimental manipulations: (a) they read vignettes about a student requesting help from professors or peers and receiving positive or negative reactions; and (b) they listened to audiotaped radio advertisements for academic services on a college campus, emphasizing either learning or performance goals. Participants reported the most willingness to seek help after reading about a positive reaction from a professor and the least willingness to seek help after reading about a negative reaction from a professor. In a nonsignificant trend, participants were more willing to seek help after hearing the ad emphasizing performance goals, such as improved grades. Students who viewed their LDs as more stigmatizing, non-modifiable, and global were less likely to report a willingness to seek help in response to negative situations and had lower overall self-esteem. These results suggest that learning services departments could bolster use of academic support by (a) intervening with faculty to try to prevent negative reactions to requests for accommodations and (b) attempting to destigmatize LDs among students themselves.