Specijalna Edukacija i Rehabilitacija (Jan 2018)
Social distance of general population towards the blind three decades ago and today
Abstract
Social distance is operationalized as the willingness of respondents to accept or reject a particular social relationship with members of the target group. Comparison of available empirical findings on the social distance towards the blind at several points of time did not lead to unambiguous conclusions. Therefore, we fully repeated the research from 1983. The aim was to determine the changes in the order of questions in the scale and the differences in social distance toward the blind for the complete scale and each of the items in the studies conducted in 1983 and 2016. In both studies the same modified Bogardus scale was used in a quota sample of adults. The results show that the closest social relationships (marriage and intimate relationships) are still at the top of the scale. Several items in the scale have changed ranking significantly (superiors at work, sharing hotel rooms, killing blind-born children). Values of the Chi-square test showed that there are significant differences in the complete scale and in the following relations: sharing hotel rooms (significantly increased distance), child marriage, child education, help in the street, municipality councilor, superiors at work, living in special institutions (significant reduction in distance). Qualitative analysis showed that the motivational basis for accepting and rejecting relationships with blind persons is less irrational today than three decades ago. Although smaller social distance in the recent study can partly be attributed to a lower degree of aggressiveness of respondents compared to that from the previous study, the fact that the explanations of answers today are far more rational than three decades ago shows that positive changes have actually occurred.
