Attitudes of University Students towards the Sexuality of Physically Disabled People

Abstract

A questionnaire, containing 36 sentence stubs, was given to a random sample of 43 male and 37 female undergraduates at an Australian university. Of the 36 sentence stubs, 13 were concerned with the sexuality of disabled women, 5 with sexuality in general and 18 with other social issues. Subjects were asked to complete the sentences rapidly with the first thought that came to mind. The Cochran Q test showed significantly more non-acceptance of sexuality of disabled women than of sexuality in general, on three out of five parallel sentence stubs. On 13 sentence stubs related to the sexual behaviour of disabled women, 39% of all subjects gave negative responses, compared with 26% who gave negative responses to five sentence stubs related to the sexual behaviour of able-bodied persons. A chi-square analysis showed males to hold more negative attitudes towards the sexuality of disabled women than females (p < 0.05).

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