Social Closeness to Persons with Disabilities in Various Contexts: A Bangladeshi Social Work Student's Sample

Research Objectives: The purpose of the current study was to examine the attitudes of social work students in Bangladesh toward people with disability.

Design: Cross-sectional survey research design.

Setting: Public universities in Bangladesh, both of rural and urbane settings.

Participants: The sample consisted of 104 social work students recruited at two public universities in Bangladesh.

Interventions: Descriptive statistics and multiple linear regression analyses were used to answer the two research questions.

Main Outcome Measures: The Attitudes to Disability Scale and the Social Distance Scale were used to measure constructs of attitudes and social closeness.

Results: The results reveal that 69.2% of the respondents were definitely willing to recommend someone who has a disability for a job working for their
friend. However, 59.6% of the respondents were either probably unwilling or absolutely unwilling to let their child marry a disabled person.

Conclusions: Most disability attitude research has the following motivations in common: (1) to attempt to answer the question of why the origin of disability attitudes is relatively complex and difficult to study, and (2) to discover how contextual factors contribute to and shape disability attitudes. Studies on college students’ attitudes toward PWDs have been consistently encouraged and undertaken.

Author(s) Disclosures: Presenting Author: Md Mozadded Hossen, Ph.D. Candidate in Rehabilitation Counseling at the School of Rehabilitation Services and Counseling at the University of Texas, Rio Grande Valley.
Non-presenting Author: Dr. Roy Chen, Professor at School of Rehabilitation Services and Counseling at University of Texas Rio Grande Valley.
*There is no conflict of interest.