School children's attitudes towards the handicapped

This study set out to determine the attitude of a group of normal British 13-year-old school children towards handicapped people while avoiding problems of previous research. As has been shown in previous studies it was demonstrated that the children's attitudes to the physically handicapped were more positive than those towards the mentally handicapped. Whereas there were very few sex differences indicating that males were more negative to the handicapped in general than females, there were a number of contact differences. Children who knew or interacted with a handicapped person were by-and-large more positive in their attitudes than those who had little or no contact with handicapped people. The results of this study are discussed in terms of the integration of handicapped and non-handicapped school children.