Attitudes of residential life and housing staff members towards college students as a function of disability.

Attitudes of Resident Assistants (RAs) towards various kinds of college students (non-disabled, physically disabled, and mentally disabled) were measured, and it was hypothesized that RAs would have significantly more positive attitudes towards physically disabled residents than towards mentally disabled or non-disabled residents, and that female RAs would be significantly more sensitive to the resident than males. Each of the 30 Residential Life and Housing Staff Member participants (20 female, 10 male: age 18-28 years) was asked to read one of three vignettes in which RA -resident interaction occurred, to rate their feelings towards the resident described in the vignette they had been randomly assigned to read, and to complete a free response prompt to provide more qualitative data. The feelings of RAs towards non-disabled and physically disabled residents were significantly more positive than their feelings towards mentally disabled residents. There was no significant difference in the attitudes of male or female RAs.