The self-efficacy expectations of non-disabled students about interactions with students with sensory impairments in college context

Abstract

This study investigated the self-efficacy expectations of non-disabled students about interaction in the college context with students with disabilities. Three hundred and one non-disabled college students completed the 26-item revision of College Interaction Self-Efficacy Questionnaire (CISEQ : Fichten et al., 1987) with reference to interaction with a student who is visually impaired, or hearing impaired. The scale yields the following two scores : self-efficacy Level and Strength. Factor analytic procedures yielded two factors, named Friendship and Self-Assertion, from the Level scores, and one other factor, named Confident Rating, from the Strength scores. The factors obtained in the visually impaired condition were similar to those obtained in the hearing impairment condition. In the analyses of the relationships of the CISEQ factor scores to respondent demographic and experiential variables, a degree of interest in people with disabilities was significantly related to the Friendship factor ; a respondent self-esteem was positively related to all factors ; female respondents and respondents with people suffering disabilities in their families responded positively on the Friendship and Confident Rating factors, while responding negatively on the Self-Assertion factor.