Citation

Perry T, Conner A, Shelar D. J. Hosp. Leis. Sport Tour. Educ. 2010; 7(2): 4-14.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2010, Hospitality, Leisure, Sport and Tourism Network, Publisher Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.3794/johlste.72.136

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

In order to fully include persons with disability in American society, they must be provided with the same opportunities to pursue recreation and leisure activities as everyone else. Understanding the attitudes of undergraduate students pursuing degrees in recreation is an important step in enhancing future service delivery for this group of users. The purpose of this research was therefore to examine the attitudes of undergraduate students enrolled in recreation and leisure service degree programmes towards persons with disabilities. An initial step was taken to establish a normative attitude mean for this population using the Attitudes Toward Disabled Persons (ATDP) scale, Form B (Yuker & Block, 1986). In addition, data were collected from 298 undergraduate students on the frequency of their interaction with persons with disabilities. Respondents’ gender and frequency of interaction with persons with disabilities (ranging from daily to less than six times a year) significantly accounted for differences in mean ATDP scores, while age, specialisation, and programme accreditation were found to have no significant impact on mean attitude scores.