Attitudes of parents,teachers, and health professionals toward child disabilities

Attitudes toward 20 different handicaps in children were investigated by requesting groups of psychologists, parents of children with handicaps, parents of children without handicaps, special education teachers, and regular classroom teachers to respond to three different attitudinal measures. The measures consisted of an Adoption Scale, calling for degree of acceptance of each condition for adoption; a version of the Semantic Differential Scale, involving ratings of each condition on seven bipolar scales; and a Social Distance scale, measuring the acceptability of children having these handicapping conditions within the community, school, social group, and home. The findings indicated major differences in attitudes attributable to disparate rating groups, handicapping conditions, and measures employed.