Abstract
The purpose of this study was (1) to explore the communality and clearness of scale items with a social desirability scale value (SDSV) of attitudes toward the visually handicapped and (2) to examine the relationships between different groups and salient dimensions of social desirability (e.g., generalized rejection, special ability, etc.). The subjects were divided into four groups: students majoring in special education, students majoring in regular education, teachers of blind children and teachers of sighted children. The subjects were requested to rate each item on a 7-point social desirability scale. The mean rating assigned to an item was regarded as SDSV. The following analyses of SDSVs were carried out. At first, we attempted to compare correlations between the SDSVs based on the judgments of different groups. As a result, most of correlation coefficients were nearly 0.90. But the correlations between the SDSVs of the students majoring in special education with those of the students majoring in regular education, and of the teachers of sighted children were relatively low. These results indicated that these low correlations might be caused by the degree of contact with or knowledge about blind persons the subjects had. Therefore, the data did not support the communality of the SDSVs. Next, the frequency distributions of SDSVs were made in order to examine the clearness of judgments in different groups. The distributions were nearly bimodal in shape for both the students majoring in special education and the teachers of blind children, but were unimodal in shape for both the students majoring in regular education and the teachers of sighted children. These findings suggest that the judgments of SDSVs were not clear especially in the latter groups. Therefore, the data did not support the clearness of the SDSVs. Finally, we attempted to examine the relationships between different groups and dimensions of social desirability by a 4x5 (group X dimension) analysis of variance. There were statistically significant differences in groups, dimensions, and interactions. The cleatness of the SDSVs based on the judgments of a group on each dimension was similar to that of the distribution shown by the same group. Dimentional structures in different groups were identical except for a dimension of integrated education. In conclusion, it is necessary to enlighten the public to understand the social problem of blind persons. Additionally, it is important that we should make efforts to reach mutual consensus in relation to the social attitudes toward the visually handicapped. Thereby, we could find the key to solve various problems.