Eighteenth International Conference on Diversity in Organizations, Communities & Nations

Abstract

Little is known about university students’ attitudes toward inclusion of students with disabilities and the factors that positively affect these attitudes. Thus, this quantitative study investigates the knowledge and attitudes of including individuals with disabilities in universities. Additionally, this study examines the relationship between college students’ knowledge and attitudes toward the inclusion of persons with disabilities in the campus. Lastly, this study determines the extent of differences between college students’ characteristics and the inclusion of persons with disabilities in the university campus. This study effectively promotes the inclusion of disability in the university by focusing on increasing the knowledge and awareness of college students without disabilities. A descriptive research design was assigned for this study to investigate college students’ knowledge of disability as well as their attitudes toward the inclusion of students with disability at universities. The study was conducted at Saint Louis University in Missouri. The study targeted graduate and undergraduate (N=12, 853) students. However, only 166 students sufficiently responded to the questions proposed in the survey. The main result of this study was that although higher levels of knowledge about disability were associated with higher levels of attitudes towards the inclusion of students with disabilities, this was not found to reflect the true association between the variables in the target population.