The Comparative of Attitudes Towards People with Disability in Russia and Israel.

Abstract

This article provides a review of comparative research on working in helping professions people’s attitudes towards people with physical and intellectual disability in Russia and Israel. The sample includes 44 middle-aged persons of both genders working with students with different forms of disability as well as without any. Results suggested that diagnostic methods of Anna Shcherbakova are relevant for the multicultural researches and can be used not only for Russian-speaking sample. With those methods in both samples were found statistically significant difference in the attitudes towards people with intellectual disability and those with other forms of disabilities. Considering other disabilities categoty, subjects showed mostly accepting or ambivalent attitude, in 30% cases — rejecting attitude. In case of intellectual disability, it is mostly rejecting (only 12% of respondents show accepting attitude towards those people). There was also found interesting connection between gender and answers concerning possibility of people with disability to run for important political positions: women much more likely to vote for the candidate with disability than men. We also have got evidence of significantly different social, cultural and psychological ways of dealing with attitudes towards people with disability. For example, for Russian respondents the main thing about people with disabilities is their weakness and inability, and Israel respondents (37% of respondents) discuss mainly the feelings and thoughts of disable persons. The conclusion is that the further examination of those differences is necessary and can help provide more accepting environment for people with various kinds of disability.