To improve secondary school students' positive attitudes towards older adults with physical disabilities via a Promoting an incLUsive Society towards older adults with physical disabilities through disability simulation education (PLUS) project.
A pretest-posttest and qualitative study design will be adopted. 1,000 junior secondary students will be recruited from six secondary schools in Hong Kong by convenience sampling to participate in a 3-day PLUS Convention. Changes in students' attitudes towards older adults with physical disabilities and satisfaction with life, and their satisfaction with the disability simulation experience will be assessed. Semi-structured interviews will be conducted with students, facilitators, teachers, and older adults with physical disabilities to gain further feedback.
Study Type
INTERVENTIONAL
Allocation
NA
Purpose
OTHER
Masking
NONE
Enrollment
1,111
Participants will participate in a 3-day PLUS Convention, comprising an inclusivity education workshop, a service-learning seminar, a disability simulation workshop, and two community contact sessions which will consist of a 60-minute interview with an older adult with a physical disability and an outdoor experience. Discussion sessions will be facilitated throughout to consolidate learning.
Secondary Schools
Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Change in the participants' attitudes towards older adults with physical disabilities
The 47-item Students' Attitudes toward People with a Disability Scale will be used. It was developed locally in the Baseline Survey of Students' Attitudes towards People with a Disability, a study conducted by the Equal Opportunities Commission in Hong Kong. It encompasses four attitude sub-scales, namely social acceptance, behavioural misconceptions, pessimism-hopelessness, and optimism-human rights. Participants will rate their agreement with each item on a 4-point Likert scale (1 = "Strongly agree" - 4 = "Strongly disagree"). The four attitude sub-scale scores will then be converted along a scale between 1-100. A higher score will indicate a more positive attitude towards people with a disability. All sub-scales had Cronbach's Alpha scores ranging from 0.69 to 0.85, which support their respectable reliability.
Time frame: Change from baseline to immediately after completion of the intervention (2 months)
Change in the participants' level of life satisfaction
The 5-item Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS) will be adopted. Participants will rate their overall judgement of their life on a 7-point Likert scale (1 = "Strongly disagree" - 7 = "Strongly agree"). The total score ranges from 5 to 35 points, with a higher score indicating a higher satisfaction with life. The SWLS has a Cronbach's Alpha score of 0.87, supporting its internal consistency and reliability.
Time frame: Change from baseline to immediately after completion of the intervention (2 months)
The participants' level of satisfaction with the disability simulation workshop
The 18-item Satisfaction with Disability Simulation Experience Scale (SDSES) will be used. Participants will rate their extent of agreement with the simulations using a 5-point Likert scale (1 = "Strongly disagree" - 5 = "Strongly agree") to indicate their satisfaction with them. A higher score will indicate higher satisfaction with the simulation experience. The survey will have one open-ended question asking students to provide additional comments about their simulation experience. The scale's internal consistency reliability is supported as its whole Cronbach's coefficient values ranged from 0.70 to 0.88.
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Time frame: Immediately after completion of the disability simulation workshop (within 1 day)