Transcript Public attitudes towards people with intellectual

The Paralympic legacy: what will it
do for people with intellectual
disabilities?
Prof. Jan Burns (Canterbury Christ Church University)
Special
Olympics
• 170 countries
• 32 sports
• 3.5 athletes
INAS
• 51 countries
• 12 sports
• 3,300 athletes
Paralympics
• 20 ? countries
• 3 sports
• 120? athletes
INAS - the International Federation for sport for paraathletes with an intellectual disability www.inas.org
Special Olympics
INAS
Paralympics
Paralympics
20 million+ viewing public
The Legacy
Aspiration for London 2012:
“influence the attitudes and perceptions
of people to change the way they
think about disabled people”
Department for
Culture, Media and
Sport, 2010 p.3
The Legacy



A large claim
However, the organisers do not set out the
pathway to this outcome
Explanations may lie in research on attitude
change
Previous research


A large quantity of previous research using
social psychological theories of attitude change
Factors implicated include:


Increasing positive contact with the
target group
Increasing legitimate positive knowledge
about the target group
London 2012 a massive social intervention
A study investigating the legagcy
claim
Joanna Ferrara (Canterbury Christ Church University)
Prof. Jan Burns (Canterbury Christ Church University)
Dr Hayley Mills (Canterbury Christ Church University
Aim:
to investigate whether it is possible to change
attitudes towards people with ID by exposure to
paralympic performance.
DESIGN
Experimental
N= 97
3 Measures
+ demographic
questionnaire
Comparison
Time 1
N= 97
3 Measures
+ demographic
questionnaire
Intervention
Paralympic
footage
+ Information
Time 2
N= 62
3 Measures
+ debrief
N= 52
3 Measures
+ debrief
Measures
Variable
Measure
Implicit attitudes Disability Attitudes
towards disability Implicit Association
Test’ (DA-IAT)
Explicit attitudes
towards ID
Author
Pruett &
Chan, 2006
The Community
Henry, Keys &
living attitude scale- Jopp, 1999
mental retardation
(CLAS-MR)
Social Desirability The balanced
Paulhus, 1991
inventory of
desirable responding
(BIDR).
Results
1.
Groups were comparable on all measures and
demographics
2.
Significant positive improvement in implicit attitudes
between T1 and T2, irrespective of group
3.
Total explicit attitude change scores not significant,
but subscale ‘empowerment’ was, again irrespective
of group
4.
5.
Regression T 1 – main predictors of positive attitude,
previous contact and gender, not social desirability
Regression T 2 – no significant predictors
Conclusions and implications




Tentative support that watching Paralympics
might improve attitudes, but equally so will
watching the Olympics
This may be a result of such stimuli evoking
feelings of ‘empowerment’
Even quite a small intervention can have an
effect, the Olympics/Paralympics is a very large
intervention
Do not know a) how long these effects last, b)
how generalisable the results are
Thank you
Questions?
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