Volume 4 Issue 3 (October 2012) - Ozean Publications

European Journal of Educational Studies 4(3), 2012
Table1: Socio-demographic variables
Variable N (%)
Gender N=220
male 122 (55.5)
female 98 (44.5)
Married 25 (11.4)
Marital status=219
Single 193 (88.1)
divorced 1 (0.5%
Own a house N=220
Yes 36 (16.4)
No 184 (83.6)
Husband/wife/parent own a house N=220
Yes 131 (59.5)
No 89 (40.5)
Own a car N=220
Yes 24 (10.9)
No 196 (89.1)
Husband/wife/parent own a car n=220
Yes 99 (45.0)
No 121 (55.0)
Own a phone N=220
Yes 210 (95.5)
No 10 (4.5)
Own a colour TV N=220
Yes 101 (45.9)
No 119 (54.1)
Social distance: Social distance is a commonly used measure of stigmatization. In this study, Social Distance
was assessed with items modelled after the original Bogardus Social Distance Scale (Bogardus 1933) and
adapted from a previous study of Social towards mental and physical illnesses (Walker et al 2008). The scale
started with an introductory vignette, which invited the respondents to imagine there was a fellow student who
suffers from a condition called sickle cell disease. They were next asked to indicate on a three-point Likert scale
how they thought most of their fellow students would treat this peer with sickle cell disease in relation to five
social interaction situations (e.g. most trainee teachers would invite this peer who suffers from sickle cell
disease to their birthday party). The five items are listed in Table 2. Unlike other previous studies of social
distance, we electively avoided scenarios that portrayed high levels of intimacy such as willingness to marry an
affected person. This was to avoid upsetting people with SCD who may be in the sample. Indeed three
respondents identified themselves as having SCD. Responses to the five social distance questions were summed
to produce a Social Distance Scale (Median = 5, Interquartile range 4, 7) with higher scores indicating more
stigmatising attitude. Published internal consistency of the Social Distance Scale ranges from 0.75 to 0.92 and
was good in this study (Cronbach’s α = 0.7). Unlike other studies (e.g. Walker et al 2008), we avoided inserting
an actual name in the vignettes in case the name coincidentally matched a real person with SCD known to the
respondents. We used the Social Distance scale as the outcome variable in the regression Analysis. However, for
descriptive purposes, we categorised the social distance scale into tertiles such that a score of 0-4 represented
“low” social distance, a score of 5 represented “moderate” social distance, and 6-10 indicated “high” social
distance. We could not categorise social distance with the method suggested by previous studies in Nigeria (e.g.
Adewuya & Makanjuola 2008) because we used a 3-point Likert scale instead of a 4-point scale.
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