| Description |
In recent years, the handicapped have become more visible in society. Television increasingly portrays handicapped individuals, the Public Law 94-142 requires that handicapped children be educated in the same classrooms with their nonhandicapped pears. Earlier studies dealing with the attitudes of nonhandicapped children towards handicapped children reported that handicapped children were not highly valued. With the increase is societal visibility of the handicapped, this study was conducted to assess the current attitudes of nine- and ten-year-old nonhandicapped children towards handicapped children. The sample consists of 125, nine- and ten-year-old children from various youth groups in the Salt Lake City, Holladay, Woods Cross and Tooele. Such a sample was considered to be representative of the rural and urban communities within the Salt Lake Valley. Three tools were used in this study: A Personal Questionnaire, the Semantic Differential, and a film. The Personal Questionnaire was implemented to obtain demographic information. This tool was administered orally to the parents of the participating subjects. The Semantic Differential was administered to the children during the first session of the study then a week later the children viewed a film. This tool measures the meaning that an individual holds for an object or person. The meaning of an object was measured through three dimensions: Evaluative, Potency, and Activity. At the beginning of the second session, a five minute, soundless film was shown to the children. The film depicted a nonhandicapped child and five handicapped children. The Semantic Dirrerential was used to rate the children in the film in terms of the three dimensions. Results indicated that nonhandicapped children value handicapped children based on the above neutral scores (more than 4) on the Evaluative dimension (good-bad, nice-awful, and fair-unfair) of the Semantic Differential. Scores for this dimension remained high in both the pre- and posttest suggesting that abstraction of concreteness of the concepts did not significantly affect the scores. Such a finding is also contrary to older studies towards the handicapped. Older studies found that handicapped people are not valued by nonhandicapped people. The Potency dimension (large-small, strong-weak, and rugged-delicate) was lower for the handicapped than the nonhandicapped children in the pre- and posttest. The lower score for the handicapped children occurred regardless of the activity that the children in the move were engaged in. Such findings suggest that nonhandicapped children view the handicapped child as weak. This aspect is important because if these children with physical defects are viewed as weak regardless of their strengths, it may hinder them from being included in games and sports. Such findings imply that nurses must focus their interventions on information concerning the handicapped children's strengths and limitations. Providing such information and the opportunity for nonhandicapped children to ask questions about their handicapped peers may alter nonhandicapped children's perceptions of handicapped children's weaknesses. Also, accurate information may increase the opportunities that handicapped children have to engage activities with their peers. |
