Community attitudes toward trainable mentally handicapped individuals.

Abstract

This study was developed to discover community attitudes toward the trainable mentally handicapped individuals. Nine areas in Southeast Kansas were the location for the distribution of a questionnaire relating to these attitudes. The questionnaire itself contained fifteen multiple-choice questions and also asked participants to state their age, occupation, sex, and economic status. Of these nine locations, each area received 150 surveys. These were conducted and distributed through the area high school students. One thousand three hundred fifty questionnaires were handed out while 728 were actually returned. From the nine communities interviewed, three of them had trainable classrooms in their locality. The other six areas did not have these facilities. The findings were compared between the two groups to discover if either area had more positive feelings and attitudes toward the trainable individual than the other.The data concerning the study was analyzed and tabulated. It was found that there was a definite relationship between the attitudes of the areas with the trainable rooms and the attitudes of the areas without the trainable classrooms. The attitudes of those locations with trainable rooms scored higher, thus having more positive feelings than the other type of locations. The locations without the trainable rooms did, however, score positive feelings but the scores were not as high as the first group. Also discovered was the fact that females had higher positive feelings toward the retarded than did the males. This was true in all communities. Economic status had no relationship to more positive scores. It was also found that occupations did not have much to do with higher positive attitudes. Various professions scored higher while others scored lower. There was no detectable difference. The age factor also did not make a difference toward more positive feelings. Many teachers and professional persons could gain valuable knowledge from this study. It shows reasons for attitudes in the various locations and could be beneficial to those having an area similar to the one in this study. If attitudes are discovered, then actions can be taken to improve the education of the public toward the mentally retarded population.