227 Denial and perceived visibility as predictors of adaptation to disability among college students Hanoch Livneh a,∗ , Erin Martz b and Lisa M. Wilson a a Rehabilitation Counseling Program, Portland State University, Portland, OR 97207, USA b Rehabilitation Counseling Program, University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, AR 72701, USA The intent of this study was to examine the relationships be- tween both denial and perceived visibility of disability and psychosocial adaptation to the condition. To this end, re- sponses of 97 college students with disabilities to measures that included sociodemographic, disability-related and psy- chological variables, as well as denial, perceived visibility of disability, and psychosocial adaptation were analyzed. Re- sults indicated that, after controlling for participants’ sociode- mographic, disability-related, and selected experiential vari- ables, only denial was found to contribute significantly to psychosocial adaptation to disability. Keywords: Denial, perceived visibility, disability, psychoso- cial adaptation, RIDI, college students 1. Introduction Successful psychosocial adaptation has been im- plicated as a powerful correlate of successful re- habilitation, vocational adjustment, perceived well- being, overall life satisfaction, and improved quality- of-life among people with chronic illness and disability (CID) [3,8,28,39,40,45]. In fact, the rehabilitation and disability studies literature often equates psychosocial adaptation to CID with the more generic concepts of perceived well-being and quality of life [6,28,50]. * Address for correspondence: Hanoch Livneh, Rehabilitation Counseling Program, Department of Special & Counselor Ed, Port- land State University, PO Box 751, Portland, OR 97207, USA. Tel.: +1 503 725 4719; E-mail: livnehh@pdx.edu. In their efforts to uncover predictors of successful adaptation to CID, researchers have typically focused on sets of predictors that spanned a wide range of so- ciodemographic, biomedical or disability-related, psy- chological, and social-environmental characteristics. Among these are: (a) the person’s sex, age, marital sta- tus, level of education, and ethnic background (as ex- amples of sociodemographic variables); (b) time since onset of disability, degree of severity, type of disabling condition, and cause of disability (as disability-related variables); (c) measures of psychological adjustment commonly indicated by levels of experienced anxiety and depression, as well as measures of personality at- tributes that include those of locus of control, self- concept, sense of coherence, and a wide range of cop- ing strategies; and (d) perceived social support, fam- ily cohesiveness, work experience and skill level, as well as availability of appropriate community support systems (e.g., medical and rehabilitation facilities, re- ligious organizations) [30,36,43]. The unique role played by each of these variables, as predictors of adaptation to CID, has been investi- gated in numerous empirical studies and has also been extensively debated in the clinical and theoretical liter- atures [44,49,54]. Among the more frequently inves- tigated personality attributes and psychological char- acteristics are those of self-concept and self-esteem (e.g. [23,27,47]), perceived locus of control (e.g. [16, 32,52], sense of coherence (e.g. [7,31]), and attribu- tion of blame (e.g. [46,48]). Also, the contribution of a plethora of coping strategies and styles (e.g. [2,4,10, 47]) has received extensive consideration in the disabil- ity literature. Finally, the contribution of emotional re- actions such as disability-triggered anxiety, depression, and anger/hostility has been extensively reported in the adaptation to CID literature (e.g. [19,27,38,51]). Two related psychosocial predictor variables that have been implicated in the adaptation to CID literature, but have yielded mixed results, are denial and perceived visibility of disability. The role of denial of a disabling Journal of Vocational Rehabilitation 16 (2001) 227–234 ISSN 1052-2263 / $8.00  2001, IOS Press. All rights reserved