ACC Accord Summer 2021 Issue 111

Can we predict the types
of people who are more
likely to hold a positive or
negative attitude towards
children with autism?
by Anne Franks
“Autistic Spectrum Disorder
(ASD) is a developmental disorder
affecting an individual’s social
interactions and the way they
experience the world around them”
(The National Autistic Society, 2018).
In the UK there are currently
around 700,000 individuals
diagnosed with ASD, which
accounts for over 1 in 100 people (1).
However, the experiences of those
with ASD can sometimes be quite
challenging. For instance, one in
three autistic adults experience
mental health difficulties and only
32% of autistic adults have a paid
job, with just 16% in full-time paid
employment (1). Furthermore,
these difficulties can sometimes
even start in childhood, with 34% of
children with ASD claiming that the
worst thing about being at school is
being picked on, and 63% of autistic
children not being in the kind of
school their parents feel would best
support them (1).
Given the difficulties faced by
children with ASD, it is important
to better understand some of
the ways in which this diagnosis
will affect them – particularly the
attitudes of the people around
them who play a huge role in
shaping their experiences (Jorm,
2000). In fact, a lot of research has
now been conducted on this area
with multiple studies focusing on
the attitudes of teachers towards
children with ASD (Park and
Chitiyo, 2010; Linton et al., 2013;
Cassidy, 2011). For example, Park
and Chitiyo (2010) used the Autism
Attitude Scale for Teachers (AAST)
to compare teachers’ attitudes
across different variables such as
gender, age of the teacher, age or
level of the students they teach and
the teacher’s knowledge of autism
to see if any of these factors could
be predictors of whether teachers
would be more or less likely to hold
a positive attitude towards autistic
children. In line with other literature
(Horrocks et al., 2008; Tilahun et al.,
2018), they found that teachers who
had attended autism workshops
had more positive attitudes
towards children with autism than
those who had not. The researchers
also found that the oldest age
category (56 years and older)
demonstrated the lowest levels of
positive attitude towards children
with autism. Lastly, they also found
that female teachers displayed
more positive attitudes than male
ones, although, the gender ratio
was very biased with just 9% of
participants being male (Park and
Chitiyo, 2010, pp. 71).
However, there are a number of
important limitations with the
existing research. For instance, the
majority of the literature comparing
attitudes towards autism across
gender tends to be dominated
by female participants (Dachez
et al. 2015; Park and Chitiyo, 2010),
meaning that there are often so
few male participants that the
results cannot really be generalised.
Additionally, much of the existing
research on attitudes towards
autism is focused only on teachers’
attitudes. However, given that
children with autism are integrated
in much broader social networks
within society than schools alone,
I thought it was important to
investigate the various factors
which might predict attitudes held
by the general population towards
children with ASD, concentrating
on four predictive factors which
have previously been highlighted
by similar attitude studies: age,
gender, knowledge about ASD
and lastly the amount of social
interaction with children with ASD.
I recruited 202 participants (100
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