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Dimitrova-Radojičić, D. (2022). The high school students attitudes towards peers with blindness, International Journal of
Cognitive Research in Science, Engineering and Education (IJCRSEE), 10(3), 109-115.
Introduction
Worldwide inclusive education practices have started an intensive development in recent years
(Alnahdi, 2020). Moreover, in our country full inclusive education will start from the school year 2022/23.
Namely, according to the Macedonian education policy all students with disabilities must be included in
regular schools. There will not be any more special schools, only Research centers. In North Macedonia
schools are compulsory, publicly funded, and free of charge to everyone from primary to higher education
(from 5 till 18 years old).
Although inclusive education for children with disabilities is now widely accepted, it is still challenged
by negative peer attitudes (Godeau et al., 2010). But, many studies have shown that when children with
typically development spend time and are educated with children with disabilities, they have more positive
attitudes towards them (Çiçek-Gümüş and Öncel, 2020). Also, when students have a positive attitude
toward their friends with disabilities, it can help their inclusion, but a negative attitude might limit inclusive
education (Ketovuori et al., 2010).
Objective
Despite what has been discovered from cross-sectional research concerning low peer acceptance
of students with disabilities in inclusive education, there is still a lack of evidence about students’ attitudes
toward students with blindness. Most researches have examined attitudes towards disability in general,
rather than attitudes toward a specic type of disabilities. However, no study has been conducted to
measure the attitudes of Macedonian high school students towards their peers with blindness. Therefore,
the goal of this study is to analyze their attitudes and to determine whether gender, school grade, and
interaction with a person with blindness have a signicant effect on these attitudes.
Materials and Methods
Participants
The study’s sample contained 218 high school students ranging between the ages of 15 to 18.
54,1% (118) female and 45,9% (100) male, which were randomly selected from seven North Macedonian
high schools. The research was approved by the principals of these high schools.
Instrument
The CATCH scale was used to examine high school students’ attitudes towards peers with blindness.
The High School Students Attitudes towards Peers with Blindness
Daniela Dimitrova-Radojičić1*
1Institute of Special education and rehabilitation, Faculty of Philosophy, University Ss. Cyril and Methodius, Skopje,
North Macedonia, e-mail: daniela@fzf.ukim.edu.mk
Abstract: The purpose of this study was to investigate the attitudes of high school pupils toward peers with blindness.
Using the CATCH-scale (Chedoke-McMaster Attitudes towards Children with Handicaps), 218 high school students’ attitudes
were assessed. High school students generally had a positive attitude towards students with blindness. The total scores on
the CATCH- scale was a little higher for female students, but with no statistically signicant difference (p>.05). Generally, the
implications of this research suggest that regular schools must implement coexistence programs that will lead to even better
attitude in inclusive settings.
Keywords: attitude, peers with blindness, high school students, inclusive education, regular school.
Original scientic paper
Received: October, 12.2022.
Revised: November, 28.2022.
Accepted: December, 04.2022.
UDK:
316.644-057.87:376-056.262
10.23947/2334-8496-2022-10-3-109-115
© 2022 by the authors. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the
Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
*Corresponding author: daniela@fzf.ukim.edu.mk
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Dimitrova-Radojičić, D. (2022). The high school students attitudes towards peers with blindness, International Journal of
Cognitive Research in Science, Engineering and Education (IJCRSEE), 10(3), 109-115.
This scale is divided into three subscales: a) an affective subscale containing emotional remarks about
student with disabilities (e.g. ‘I would be afraid of a disabled child’) b) a behavioral subscale providing
examples of what students would do to help a student with disabilities (e.g. ‘In class I wouldn’t sit next to
a disabled child’), and nally, c) a cognitive subscale comprising verbal statements of belief concerning
children with disabilities (e.g. ‘Disabled children can make new friends’) (King et al., 1989; Bossaert
and Petry, 2013). It has 36 items in total, 12 in each component, with an equal amount of positively
and negatively phrased statements (De Laat, Freriksen and Vervloed, 2013). The items are randomly
organized, with positive and negative statements alternating. A 5-point Likert scale is used to rate the
CATCH-scale, with values ranging from 0 (strongly disagree) to 4 (strongly agree). Items with negative
wording were scored in reverse. The points range from 0 to 40 since the nal scores are calculated by
adding together all the individual scores, dividing the total by the number of items, and multiplying by 10.
According to Rosenbaum et al. (1986), “a higher score means a more positive attitude” (p. 521).
CATCH uses a general term (e.g. ‘a disabled child’) as the attitude object. Unlike other scales, this scale
does not differentiate between attitudes toward different types of disabilities. For this study, the word “child
with disability” was changed to “student with blindness” because teens do not want to be classied as a
“child”; moreover, in the questionnaire was specied that they should consider peers their age. In addition,
demographic information of participants, as well as their ‘disability knowledge’, was collected.
Procedure
All students lled out the CATCH scale independently and anonymously. They were given careful
instructions about how to complete the questionnaire.
Results
Table 1 provides an overview of the sample’s demographic characteristics. High school students
were also asked to rate their general knowledge about peers with blindness - min 1 (absolute no knowledge),
and max 5 (complete knowledge). From the results, it’s obvious that they have partial knowledge about
students with blindness (M=3.12; SD=1.062). On the next question about how they got that knowledge: 39
(17,9%) of them answered from personal experience or contact with a person with blindness; 129 (59,2%)
from reading; 22 (10,1%) school and 28 (12,8%) mention others.
Table 1
Demographic characteristics of students
All responses to items on the CATCH scale were classied into three categories: disagree, neutral,
and agree. Strongly agree, as well as strongly disagree, were included in agree and disagree categories
respectively. The results of these 36 questions are shown in the next tables divided in 3 subscales
(Affective subscale, Behavioral subscale and Cognitive subscale).
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Dimitrova-Radojičić, D. (2022). The high school students attitudes towards peers with blindness, International Journal of
Cognitive Research in Science, Engineering and Education (IJCRSEE), 10(3), 109-115.
Table 2
Affective subscale
*Mean (Standard Deviation)
The most notable responses from the affective subscale (Table 2) were questions 18, 26, 1, and
6. Namely, results showed that 159 (73%) of students stated they disagree that they would be afraid of
students with blindness. One hundred and forty (65.6%) of them stated they would not like a friend with
blindness as much as their other friends. Student participants also agree that they feel sorry for students
with blindness (n=156; 71,6%) and they wouldn’t worry if a student with blindness sat next to them (n=150;
68,8%).
Table 3
Behavioral subscale
*Mean (Standard Deviation)
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Dimitrova-Radojičić, D. (2022). The high school students attitudes towards peers with blindness, International Journal of
Cognitive Research in Science, Engineering and Education (IJCRSEE), 10(3), 109-115.
The frequency of responses to the behavioral subscale (Table 3) indicated that most of the
participants disagree with the statement: “I would try to stay away from a student with blindness.” (82,6%)
and “I would not introduce a student with blindness to my friends.” (71,5%). At the same time, they agree
that they would stick up for a student with blindness who was being teased (88,1%) and will invite peers
with blindness to their birthday party (83,5%).
Table 4
Cognitive subscale
*Mean (Standard Deviation)
When considering the answers on the cognitive subscale (Table 4), 78% of the students agree that
students with blindness want lots of attention from adults, and 82,1% claimed that they did not agree with
the statement that students with blindness do not want to make friends.
Figure 1. Mean score on CATCH subscales
Higher school students’ attitudes towards students with blindness were generally positive (M=30.32,
SD=4.689). The mean score on the behavioral subscale (M=32.24, SD=5.508) was the highest while
the one on cognitive was the lowest (M=29.29.32, SD=2.856), which shows they do not necessarily
understand a child with blindness (Figure 1).
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Dimitrova-Radojičić, D. (2022). The high school students attitudes towards peers with blindness, International Journal of
Cognitive Research in Science, Engineering and Education (IJCRSEE), 10(3), 109-115.
Table 5
Gender
CATCH scores on subscales are shown in Table 5 for both groups, for female (n=118) and male
participants (n=100). The Student’s t-test was used to compare data between groups. Between the
male students and the female students, there were no signicant differences in the mean scores on
affective, behavioral, and total CATCH scores. But, mean scores on the cognitive subscale as a whole
were signicantly different (29.98 vs 28.61; p=0.001). Namely, female students have more positive beliefs
about children with blindness.
Table 6
Interaction with person with blindness
Findings suggest that students who reported having contact or interaction with person with disability
(n=38) recorded higher scores on CATCH than those who reported that they did not have contact or
interaction with person with disability (n=179). An independent samples t-test suggests a signicant
difference between the scores on the whole CATCH scale, as well as the three subscales (Table 6).
Table 7
One-way ANOVA for signicant difference between subscales and schools grade
Table 7, the ANOVA test shows that students from different school grade have no signicantly
differently score on CATCH subscales: affective (F= .579, p= .629); behavioral (F=1.193, p= .313) and
cognitive (F=2.305, p = .078).
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Dimitrova-Radojičić, D. (2022). The high school students attitudes towards peers with blindness, International Journal of
Cognitive Research in Science, Engineering and Education (IJCRSEE), 10(3), 109-115.
Discussions
In studies conducted on students from different countries, their attitudes towards peers with
disabilities have proved to be positive. Unfortunately, there aren’t many studies that examine attitudes
toward a particular disability, such as blindness (Nikolaraizi and De Reybekiel, 2001; De Laat, Freriksen
and Vervloed, 2013). In line with most of those studies, this study also shows that high school students
have positive attitudes towards peers with blindness.
The attitudes of individuals toward people with disabilities are frequently impacted by a variety
of factors. Since an attitude may be thought of as a multidimensional construct comprising of affection,
behavior, and cognition, also it is a subject to change and modication (De Laat, Freriksen and Vervloed,
2013). Age, culture, gender, religion, self-esteem, and whether or not one knows a disabled person are
the most researched factors that might affect attitude. Several studies have shown that when attitudes are
compared based on gender, girls’ attitudes are more positive than boys’. In this research gender seems
to affect only the positive cognitive components of attitudes toward peers with blindness, specically
female students have statistically a more positive attitude than male students on the cognitive subscale.
Interestingly, male students have a more positive attitude on the behavioral subscale.
There are studies that show that having a friend with a disability and interacting with a person with
a disability or a family member with a disability has a positive effect on children’s attitudes (Armstrong et
al., 2016). Also, in this CATCH study, the scores were signicantly higher in students who had contact or
interaction with a blind person than in those who did not.
The last question was whether school grades have a signicant effect on the attitudes toward
students with blindness. The results showed no age effect on the attitudes of high school students towards
peers with blindness.
Conclusions
Hutzler (2003) found attitudes play a signicant role in the success of inclusive classroom, which
indicates the importance of creating positive attitudes between students with and without disabilities. As
Helen Keller noted, a famous deaf-blind writer, “the chief handicap of the blind is not blindness, but the
attitude of seeing people towards them” (Vasileiadis and Doikou-Avlidou, 2018).
Implementing coexistence programs is one strategy to inuence typical students’ attitudes of their
peers with disabilities (Vasileiadis and Doikou-Avlidou, 2018). These programs mostly involve students
with typically developing, with a lesser proportion also including pupils who have the same disability (Mu,
Siegel and Allinder, 2000). In the practice, the main goals of well-known programs like “special friend” or
“peer buddy” are to promote social contact, eliminate discrimination, and change attitudes (Vasileiadis,
Koutras and Stagiopoulos, 2021).
Acknowledgements
The author states that no commercial or nancial connections existed that may be considered as
a possible conict of interest when conducting the research. Thanks to the graduating students of the
Institute of Special Education and Rehabilitation for their participation in conducting the research.
Conict of interests
The author declares no conict of interest.
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