Nursing Students' Perceptions of The disabled and the Impact of Contact Experience on Their Attitudes Toward The disabled

This study is a descriptive research study to understand the effects of nursing students' perception of the disabled and contact experience with the disabled on attitudes toward the disabled. The subjects of thie study were 137 nursing students from Y city. Data analysis was performed using the SPSS 25.0 program, utilizing descriptive statistics, t-tests, One-way ANOVA, and Pearson’s correlation coefficients, Multiple Regression Analysis. The results showed that attitude toward the disabled was significantly changed according to the motivation for choosing a nursing major (t=7.063, p=.001) and satisfaction with the nursing major (t=9.449, p<.001). It was also found that the attitudes was found to improve after education on disability awareness (t=2.649, p=.009). Factors influencing attitudes toward the disabled included completion of disability awareness education (t=-1.75, p=.042), perception of the disabled (t=-3.79, p<.001) and satisfaction with nursing major (t=-3.51, p=.001). This showed an explanatory power of 29% (F=10.64, p<.001). Based on this, it is necessary to develop a program to increase contact experience with the disabled and volunteer activities in various ways to positively improve nursing students' awareness and attitude toward the disabled, and foster positive attitudes toward the disabled.