Attitudes and behavior toward students with handicaps by their nonhandicapped peers

The theory of reasoned action (Ajzen & Fishbein, 1973) was used to examine the relationship between attitudes toward becoming a peer tutor for a student with handicaps and actually volunteering to become a peer tutor. This model suggests that intention is the best predictor of behavior and that intention consists of an attitudinal component (attitudes toward the behavior) and a normative component (perceptions of what other people think you should do). Subjects were 125 students in Grades 5 through 7 who were told about peer tutoring and asked to volunteer. Results showed that this model can be used to predict behavior of nonhandicapped students toward their handicapped peers in an educational setting. The importance and implications of these findings were discussed.