Attitudes of Japanese Adults toward Persons with Intellectual Disability: Comparisons over Time and Across Countries

Eleven elementary schools were selected randomly from a typical medium sized city of Japan. Parents of pupils who were attending the schools were surveyed. A small proportion of agreement with, “The reality of lives of persons with intellectual disability (ID) should be told more widely to the public” was interpreted as a typical Japanese response. Agreement with accountability for care for persons with ID is on the side of the family was unexpectedly high. Persons with ID’s “having a normal life in a community” did not get much agreement. This indicates that the idea of normalization is not necessarily well rooted in Japan. Results were compared with results of two studies conducted about 40 and 20 years ago in Japan, indicating that attitude toward persons with ID has improved greatly over the years. Results were also compared with results of three studies performed in the US. Studies may be grouped into two types concerning attitudes toward people with intellectual disability (ID). The first type (and most studies belong to this type) makes an attempt to uncover new findings using a technique that has not been employed in previous studies. The second type of study makes an attempt to describe present state of the situation using an existing technique, and gets results such as 33% of respondents agree to some question. In the latter type, data become a historical record of the population at the time surveyed. Appropriate sampling methodology and a large sample size is needed for this kind of survey. In this field, most studies have used children or college students as participants instead of the general public, probably because large numbers of students were readily available. (Students as participants are important in their own right—but they are not a representative sample of the public.) There have been relatively few of the latter type study. Zentokuren (1962) is such an example of this type in Japan. The study published in Japanese gave important data regarding the 1960s in Japan (see Tachibana and Watanabe [2002] for some details in English). The first purpose of the present study was to set out standard data in present-day Japan similar to earlier studies such as Zentokuren (1962). We have previously carried out a study using a set of questions on a smaller sample (Tachibana & Watanabe, 2003). Results gave us a chance to improve some of the questions. Questions revised from the previous study were employed in the present study. We believed we could get representative data on the attitude of Japanese people toward persons with ID in the present study and produce a standard data set useful for international comparison. As the second purpose, we examined whether attitudes of Japanese people toward people with ID have changed over 40 years, by comparison with results of Zentokuren (1962). In addition, we made comparisons with results of studies, which were made 25 years ago in the same city (Shirai, Shirai, Fujiki, & Tsukahara, 1979). The third purpose was to compare our data with data obtained from studies in the U.S. (Antonak, Fielder, & Mulick, 1993; Antonak & Harth, 1994; Henry, Keys, Jopp, & Alcazar, 1996). We wish to thank the Municipal Committee for Education in Kasugai and the 11 participant schools for giving us the opportunity for the present survey. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Toshiaki Tachibana, Institute for Developmental Research, Aichi Human Service Center, Kasugai, Aichi 480-0392, JAPAN. E-mail: [email protected] Education and Training in Developmental Disabilities, 2004, 39(3), 227–239 © Division on Developmental Disabilities Attitudes in Japan / 227