Attitudes Toward Clothing and Self‐Concept of Physically Handicapped and Able‐Bodied University Men and Women

Abstract

The purposes of this study were to ascertain the extent to which students with physical handicaps have clothing attitudes that differ from able‐bodied students, and to investigate the relationship between self‐concept and clothing attitudes. Data were collected from 35 handicapped and 76 able‐ bodied university students. Handicapped students were defined as those who had orthopedic dis abilities and were confined to wheelchairs. The clothing attitude variables were appearance, fash ion, management, comfort, and durability. There were clothing attitude differences between hand icapped and able‐bodied students for all variables except appearance. Handicapped students had consistently lower clothing attitude scores on all variables studied. There were significant differ ences between men and women students on all clothing attitude variables regardless of physical condition, with women indicating a more positive attitude on each of the variables. There was not a significant difference in self‐concept scores between the handicapped and able‐bodied students, nor was a statistically significant relationship identified between the clothing variables and self‐ concept scores.