Resumen de Attitudes towards disability: The experience of “contact” in a sample of italian college students

Rossella Falanga, Maria Elvira De Caroli

• The theoretical frameworks of this study were the model of action-research and the contact hypothesis (Allport, 1954) considered a strategy to modify prejudice towards disability (Corrigan et al., 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 attitudes towards disability as a result of exposition to a contact with disabled subjects housed in a rehabilitation centre. Participants were 83 college students divided into: experimental group (contact) and control group (no contact). Materials were composed by questionnaire on attitudes towards the disabled person, social/scholastic integration, and rehabilitative-health services and Semantic Differential on “Disabled person”.

  Results showed that, after the contact, students of the experimental group increased perception of 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 strategy to facilitate positive contact, and of rehabilitative services; they assessed the disabled person as competent and appreciable subject, but even more problematic.