Parents of pupils who were attending elementary schools in a typical medium-size city of Japan were surveyed. Respondents who had a close friend who has a person with intellectual disability (ID) as a family member or who had experience of voluntary work or job-related contact showed clear favorable attitudes. However, they differed greatly from respondents who have a person with ID in the family in their ideas of independent life of people with ID. Respondents who have a relative with ID did not show as favorable attitudes as expected, and showed only a small degree of concern for ID problems. Question-items were examined individually to determine external validity for an attitude test, using the criterion of the family variable results.
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