Attitudes towards Disability: the Experience of “Contact” in a Sample of Italian College Students

The theoretical frameworks of this study were the model of action-research and the contacthypothesis (Allport, 1954) considered a strategy to modify prejudice towards disability (Corrigan etal., 2010) expressed by teachers, families, and health service staff (De Caroli and Sagone, 2011;Arvaniti et al., 2009). The purpose of study was the exploration of changes in social attitudestowards disability as a result of exposition to a contact with disabled subjects housed in a rehabilitationcentre. Participants were 83 college students divided into: experimental group (contact) andcontrol group (no contact). Materials were composed by questionnaire on attitudes towards the disabledperson, social/scholastic integration, and rehabilitative-health services and SemanticDifferential on “Disabled person”.Results showed that, after the contact, students of the experimental group increased perceptionof disabled person as a resource, sociable person, burden for the society, limitation for the family,unintelligible subject, and different person; they improved evaluation of integration as useful strategyto facilitate positive contact, and of rehabilitative services; they assessed the disabled person ascompetent and appreciable subject, but even more problematic.