Abstract
An accurate understanding of people with disabilities is important for normalizing their lives. Accordingly, we investigated the public's level of accurate knowledge about child development and rehabilitation subjects. We recruited a total of 74 participants: 40 first-year nursing students and 34 first-year speech-language and hearing therapy students. The sample comprised 14 male and 60 female participants, ranging in age from 18 to 43 years. We asked them whether they knew certain words; in cases where they responded affirmatively, we further asked them to explain the meanings of each word in 2-3 sentences. The response rate was 100%. The words related to children with disabilities were not well known. In particular, “children with severe impairment," “children with severe multiple impairments," and “medical care" were not known to 93%, 73%, and 69% of the students, respectively. The words related to developmental disorders were well known but not understood accurately. About 34% participants confused the term “developmental disorder" with “intellectual disability," while 20% confused the term “learning disability" with “intellectual disability." These findings suggest that even students regarded as being interested in child development and rehabilitation do not have sufficient knowledge about people with disabilities. Therefore, we need to extend the public's accurate knowledge.
