The Paralympic legacy: what will it do for people with intellectual

disabilities?

Prof. Jan Burns (Canterbury Christ Church University)

INAS - the International Federation for sport for para-athletes with an intellectual disability www.inas.org

INAS

Special Olympics

Paralympics

Paralympics

20 million+ viewing public

The Legacy

Aspiration for London 2012:

“influence the attitudes and perceptions of people to change the way they think

about disabled people”

Department for Culture, Media and

Sport, 2010 p.3

The Legacy

A large claim

However, the organisers do not set out the pathway to this outcome

Explanations may lie in research on attitude change

Previous researchA large quantity of previous research using

social psychological theories of attitude change

Factors implicated include:

Increasing positive contact with the target group

Increasing legitimate positive knowledge about the target group

London 2012 a massive social intervention

A study investigating the legagcy claim

Joanna Ferrara (Canterbury Christ Church University)Prof. Jan Burns (Canterbury Christ Church University)Dr Hayley Mills (Canterbury Christ Church University

Aim:

to investigate whether it is possible to change attitudes towards people with ID by exposure to paralympic performance.

N= 973 Measures+ demographic questionnaire

N= 973 Measures+ demographic questionnaire

Exp

erim

enta

lC

om

par

iso

n

Time 1 Time 2

N= 523 Measures+ debrief

N= 623 Measures+ debrief

Intervention

Paralympic footage

+ Information

DESIGN

MeasuresVariable Measure Author

Implicit attitudes towards disability

Disability Attitudes Implicit Association Test’ (DA-IAT)

Pruett & Chan, 2006

Explicit attitudes towards ID

The Community living attitude scale- mental retardation (CLAS-MR)

Henry, Keys & Jopp, 1999

Social Desirability The balanced inventory of desirable responding (BIDR).

Paulhus, 1991

Results

1. Groups were comparable on all measures and demographics

2. Significant positive improvement in implicit attitudes between T1 and T2, irrespective of group

3. Total explicit attitude change scores not significant, but subscale ‘empowerment’ was, again irrespective of group

4. Regression T 1 – main predictors of positive attitude, previous contact and gender, not social desirability

5. Regression T 2 – no significant predictors

Conclusions and implicationsTentative support that watching Paralympics might improve attitudes, but equally so will watching the Olympics

This may be a result of such stimuli evoking feelings of ‘empowerment’

Even quite a small intervention can have an effect, the Olympics/Paralympics is a very large intervention

Do not know a) how long these effects last, b) how generalisable the results are

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Thank youQuestions?