Professional and personal attitudes of physiotherapy students toward disabled persons.

Form A of the Attitude Toward Disabled Persons (ATDP-A) scale was used to discover whether physiotherapy students distinguish between personal and professional attitudes toward people with disabilities. Forty fourth-year students successively completed two copies of the ATDP-A scale, one with their personal views and one with their professional views. A two-tailed t-test for correlated samples showed that the mean professional score was significantly greater (p < 0.05) than the mean personal score. Results are discussed in terms of inconsistencies in the research literature as well as implications for physiotherapy training programmes.