title: Children's willingness to share activities with a physically handicapped peer: am I more willing than my classmates?
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To examine factors affecting children's willingness to share activities with a peer presented as physically handicapped.
  
  
  METHODS
  Participants were 120 elementary school children randomly assigned to view a video of an ambulatory child or the same child in a wheelchair. They rated, on the Shared Activities Questionnaire (SAQ), their own willingness (SAQ-Self) and their perceptions of classmates' willingness (SAQ-Others) to participate in activities with the child.
  
  
  RESULTS
  SAQ-Self ratings were consistently higher for the peer in the wheelchair. On the SAQ-Others, differences favoring the child in the wheelchair disappeared, and ratings of this child were lower than SAQ-Self ratings. No interactions were found between ambulation status and age or rater gender or preference for type of shared activity.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Children showed highly positive intentions toward a peer in a wheelchair, but intentions attributed to classmates were less positive, which suggests "social desirability" influenced their own ratings.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Memphis, Tennessee 38152, USA. s.morgan@mail.psyc.memphis.edu
authors.forename: S B
authors.initials: SB
authors.lastname: Morgan
authors.forename: A A
authors.initials: AA
authors.lastname: Bieberich
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Walker
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Schwerdtfeger
mesh_terms: D002648:Child; D019988:Children with Disabilities / Q000523:psychology*; D005163:Factor Analysis, Statistical; D005260:Female; D007722:Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010379:Peer Group; D011581:Psychological Tests; D012928:Social Desirability; D012938:Social Perception; D014741:Video Recording; D014743:Videotape Recording; D014910:Wheelchairs