Attitudes of Nursing Students Toward Mental Retardation Before and After Curricular Experience With Mentally Retarded Children.

This study sought to determine whether or not the attitudes of nursing students toward mental retardation were different after a planned curricular experience with mentally retarded children. The sample consisted of 72 nursing students enrolled in the University of Florida College of Nursing, in the summer and fall quarters, 1974. There were 46 students who had not had the planned experience with mentally retarded children and 26 students who had already had the experience.

The design of the study was the Static-Group Comparison discussed by Campbell and Stanley. The Attitude Behavior Scale Toward Mental Retardation (ABS-MR) developed by John E.

Jordan was used to measure attitudes and information about mental retardation. The ABS-MR was divided into 10 subscales.

Hypotheses were formulated for eight of these subscales. The hypotheses predicted that there would be a significant difference in the pretest and posttest groups in their attitudes toward mental retardation and in their knowledge about mental retardation. There was a difference in the mean scores for all eight hypotheses, but only two were statistically significant, one of which concerned the subjects' perceptions of what other people generally believe about interacting with the mentally retarded; the other dealt with the subjects' perceptions of aspects of life or life situations.

The differences were all in a negative direction except for the difference on the subscale dealing with knowledge about mental retardation which was in a positive direction .

It was concluded that there was a difference in attitudes after the planned curricular experience with mentally retarded children, factual information may increase as a result of planned curricular experience and attitudes tended to become more negative after such experience.

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