ABSTRACT

Objective : This paper presents an empirical study on the bias toward the disabled by the students studying occupational therapy, who will make an expert group to take care of them inthe future. It was investigated how much sense of distance the students had according to thephysical characteristics of the disabled.Method : Total 128 students majoring in occupational therapy were asked to fill out a self-administered questionnaire.The physical characteristics of the disabled and the sense of distance toward the disabled were measured as follows:The visible physical characteristics of the disabled were restricted to the disorders of externalphysical functions based on the Article 29 ‘Classification of the Disabled’ of the Disabled WelfareAct. The functional characteristics of the disabled were measured by using the FIM (FunctionalIndependence Measure) method. Meanwhile, Westie (1952)’s inventory of the sense of distancewas adopted for the inventory for the sense of distance toward the disabled in the study.Results : The subjects showed the biggest sense of distance toward the disabled in the orderof the disabled with encephalopathy, physical handicap, language disorder, visual disturbancesand acoustic disturbances. As for the functional characteristics, the sense of distance was thegreatest in the order of the completely dependent disabled, partially dependent disabled, andcompletely independent disabled.The average sense of the distance was compared in terms of the subjects’ school and year,and the results revealed there were statistically significant differences in all the areas except forthe sense of distance toward the completely dependent disabled.Conclusions : The sample needs to be expanded in number, and random sampling is required to secure diverse social and cultural backgrounds. In addition, the causality verification shouldbe done in order to understand the nature of sense of distance in a study on it according to thephysical characteristics of the disabled. Finally, an evaluation tool needs to be developed thatcan be used to measure the sense of distance toward the disabled.