Abstract:

The article deals with quantitative quasi-experimentally designed research on the impact of social affiliation to individual with disability on their attitudes conducted in the Czech Republic at 100 classes in three regions. The research aimed at finding potential influences on pupil’s attitudes towards people with disability. The study covered 102 teachers and 1.714 pupils. The main objective was to discover whether pupil´s social affiliation to individuals with disability has any influence on their own attitudes to people with disability. The research tool to measure pupils´ attitudes to people with disabilities was inspired by researches conducted by Cairns and McClatchey in 2013, or Pennicard in 1990. The tool measures the attitudes towards people with disability in pupils at age 10-12. Whithin the research process, a one-minute videos made by people with disability was performed to those without disabilities. Persons with disability introduced themselves in the video and gave their strengths and weaknesses. Researchers added a question on social affiliation of pupils to the research tool focusing on the strength of social affiliation.

The relation between the pupils with/without difficulty was evaluated on the five-grade scale:
1. I have never seen a person with a disability;
2. I have seen such a person somewhere;
3. I have talked to such a person;
4. I meet such people on regular basis and
5.; I have a family member or a friend with a disability.

As the data did not have normal distribution, non-parametric Mann-Whitney U test was applied. The main outcomes on the 5% significance level show positive relation between social affiliation with an individual with disability and attitudes in pupils of fourth and fifth classes. The conclusion was made that pupils of fourth and fifth classes, who are in affiliation with disabled individuals, show more positive attitude to people with disabilities. From this respect, we support Allport´s contact theory as well as theory of planned behaviour. Results of the Mann-whitney U test show the effect on the 5% level of significance, especially within the frame of the highest category (peer) against all others. Thus the relation between social affiliation of the highest score reflects statistically more significant positive attitudes in those with a disabled friend than pupils marking all other scores on the scale. Joint education environment where there is a pupil with disability does not automatically mean attitudes that are more positive; being schoolmates does not automatically suggest being friends. We would recommend to focus how peers with disability in classes affect the social affiliation of other classmates. However, this study does not show this relation. Our results show the social affiliation can affect attitudes of pupils towards people with disability.

Keywords:

Social affilitation, attitudes towards disability, pupils