Attitudes toward people with disabilities of physiotherapists and members of the general population.

The Interaction with Disabled Persons (IDP) Scale is a new instrument developed to measure community attitudes towards people with disabilities. This article reports a section of the validation study for the IDP which took place between 1988 and 1990. It reports a comparison of performance on the IDP of a sample of 109 practising physiotherapists who responded to a questionnaire distributed by the Australian Physiotherapy Association and a sample of 4180 cases which covered a broad cross section of the Australian population. Results support hypotheses that members of the physiotherapist sample would be more positive in their attitudes and that positiveness of attitude is related to level of prior close contact with people with disabilities.