Attitudes towards disabilities in a multicultural society

Health practitioners ( N = 665) from the Chinese, Italian, German, Greek, Arabic and Anglo Australian communities used social distance scales to rate the attitudes of people in their communities toward 20 disability groups. Significant differences were found in community attitudes toward people with...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Social science & medicine (1982) 1993-03, Vol.36 (5), p.615-623
Main Authors: Westbrook, Mary T., Legge, Varoe, Pennay, Mark
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Asian Cultural Groups
Attitude to Health - ethnology
Attitudes
Australia
Biological and medical sciences
Cross-Cultural Comparison
Crosscultural studies
Cultural Pluralism
Culture
Disability
disability culture stigma hierarchy attitudes
Disabled Persons - psychology
Discrimination (Psychology)
European Cultural Groups
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Handicapped
Health Professions
Humans
Illness and personality
Middle Eastern Cultural Groups
Minority Groups
Physical Abnormalities
Psychology and medicine
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Social Attitudes
Social Distance
Social Perception
stigma hierarchy
Surveys and Questionnaires
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Summary:Health practitioners ( N = 665) from the Chinese, Italian, German, Greek, Arabic and Anglo Australian communities used social distance scales to rate the attitudes of people in their communities toward 20 disability groups. Significant differences were found in community attitudes toward people with 19 of these disabilities. Overall the German community expressed greatest acceptance of people with disabilities, followed by the Anglo, Italian, Chinese, Greek and Arabic groups. However the relative degree of stigma attached to the various disabilities by the communities was very similar. In all communities, people with asthma, diabetes, heart disease and arthritis were the most, and people with AIDS, mental retardation, psychiatric illness and cerebral palsy, the least accepted of the disability groups. These stigma hierarchies were remarkably similar to other hierarchies reported over the last 23 years. The findings have important implications for people with disabilities and health practitioners in multicultural societies.
ISSN:0277-9536
1873-5347
DOI:10.1016/0277-9536(93)90058-C