The importance and possibilities of examining attitudes toward people with disability

Abstract

Possible functions of negative attitudes toward disabled as a marginal group as well as the impact such attitudes may have on social and emotional development and on well-being of persons with disabilities are discussed in the article. To know about these attitudes could be of crucial importance in predicting the behavior of non-disabled toward disabled people, and in finding the efficient ways for changing the attitudes toward disabled. Revealing of implicit attitudes appears to be even more important in the light of waxing tendency to show off with positive attitudes toward disabled. In fact, the possibility of exerting control over tendency to demonstrate socially desirable responses seems to be one of the basic methodological tasks in constructing scales for investigating attitudes toward disabled. Multidimensional procedure in examining the attitudes seems to be the second methodological imperative. The attitudes can be influenced by different personal, experiential and socio-demographic variables. So the findings of correlations of these variables to attitudes toward disabled, as well as potential differences in attitudes toward different types of disability, are presented.

U članku se razmatraju moguće funkcije negativnih stavova prema ometenima, kao jednoj marginalnoj grupi, kao i posledice takvih stavova po socijalni i emocionalni razvoj i dobrobit ometenih osoba. Primarni značaj poznavanja ovih stavova leži u mogućnosti predviđanja ponašanja neometenih ljudi prema ometenima, kao i u mogućnosti nalaženja efikasnih oblika uticanja na promenu ovih stavova Naročito se naglašava značaj otkrivanja implicitnih stavova prema ometenima, s obzirom na tendenciju za javnim ispoljavanjem pozitivnijih stavova. U ovome leži i jedan od bitnih metodoloških problema u konstruisanju skala za procenu ovih stavova, naime problem kontrolisanja faktora tendencije ka davanju socijalno poželjnih odgovora. Pokazuje se, takođe, da drugi metodološki imperativ treba da bude multidimenzinalni pristup u ispitivanju stavova prema ometenima. Različite varijable, ličnosne, iskustvene i sociodemografske, mogu da utiču na ove stavove, pa se navode nalazi istraživanja u kojima su traženi korelati stavova prema ometenima, kao i nalazi o eventualnim razlikama u stavovima prema različitim tipovima ometenosti.