It is a fact that the minorities are in recent days discriminated and exclude from various domains in our society. In order to realize an inclusive welfare on top of the base for guarantee of human rights and diversity management with regard to those minorities, this study has focused on improvement of attitude environment that is a basic foundation. In this context, this study aimed to empirically investigate the attitude patterns, which were perceived by others, using a sense of social distance. To this end, this study comparatively analyzed attitude degree applying social distance, difference in attitude of each minority group and aspects of influencing factor for college students who are deemed as important leading forces of attitude discourse in terms of life-cycles, educational courses and social positions. In this process, this study attempted to comprehensively consider both an accuracy in application of analysis and various aspects in deriving an implication by performing the analysis that considers not only cognitive, emotional and behavioral factors from personal aspect but also major factors from school aspect.
For the analysis, this study conducted surveys via interviews and phone calls using structured questionnaire with 660 college students as the subjects enrolled in 22 colleges over the country. As analysis method, the descriptive analysis was performed on the collected data using SPSS 20.0 with regard to attitude degree, an analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) was performed for difference in attitude of each minority group, and the hierarchical linear model (HLM) analysis was performed for verification of influencing factors using HLM 7.0.
Based on the study process thus far, the conclusions of this study are as follows.
Firstly, the degree of social distance evaluated by the subjects were confirmed to be the median value or above in the mean for entire subjects and in all of each minority group. In particular, a social distance for the disabled was 4.45, which was the highest, followed by the homosexuals and the multi-cultural people.
Secondly, a descriptive analysis confirmed that an average difference in social distance between minorities was statistically significant. Physical distance that is a sub-factor of social distance showed same result. In addition, a post-hoc analysis confirmed that such a difference was significant, therefore, it was possible to know that there exists a constant level difference among attitudes of minority groups perceived by college students.
Thirdly, it was confirmed that school effect is statistically significant in influencing factor verification (multi-layer analysis) of social distance for all minority groups and has about 30% of explanation power. The disabled in particular were relatively higher than other minority groups.
Fourthly, fixed notion, negative emotion and contact experience were confirmed as statistically significant personal characteristics factors to social distance and of those, an influence of negative emotion was more important.
From the study results above, this study can present the practical suggestions as follows.
Firstly, the negative attitudes on social minorities were still observed and the efforts to approach entire minority groups are required. To accomplish this, 1) the relevant laws need to be enacted in order to realize the efforts on attitude improvement to the minorities not only from personal but school perspectives, 2) with such a foundation, although the direction of whole frame is also established together under the condition of similar influencing factors on formation of attitude of minority groups in the course of preparing strategic means, it is necessary to maintain a constant variation in constructing the priority and side dot by reflecting the difference on both level and importance of each minority group, 3) when constituting the program including educations, it is necessary to consider the major factors for formation and improvement of attitudes such as cognitive, emotional and behavioral aspects with a harmony.
Secondly, since an access to entire minority groups and attitude to the disabled were confirmed to be significantly negative, efforts for improvement is first required. Therefore, 1) it is necessary to prepare a foundation for actively recommending to include the education for understanding the disabled in the regular curriculums and also required to shift the program that is focusing on the cognitive judgment ability improvement of the existing understanding education to the program to which the emotional empathic ability is added, 2) in order to increase an opportunity of students on service practice for the disabled, it requires not only to make the efforts from the social service center itself within a school but also to intensify an association with the relevant organization in schools including the disabled student support centers or the organizations related to the disabled in the local community, afterwards, it is necessary to make effort to increase the service practice of students as well as to expand the number of students in participation, 3) unlike other minority groups, with a condition on that the system for academic affairs can cause a certain level of a mitigating effect to the negative impacts of fixed notion or negative emotions, a systematic support institutions need to be prepared by considering a provision of reasonable accommodation and affirmative action on equality realization.
Thirdly, consideration to the homosexuals, which appeared negative following the disabled, is required. With regard to this, 1) an opportunity for fixed notion and negative emotion must be first minimized through early education. Since it was verified that understanding education in college can alleviate the negative effects from such fixed notion and negative emotion, education on human rights needs to be intensified from the perspective of continuation of previous educations, 2) it is important not only in early intervention and in formal aspect of continuation in time but also in composition of educational contents. Therefore, it is thought that understanding on cultural context is required for somewhat heterogeneous social groups including the homosexuals and it is necessary to prepare educational composition with intensifying the right-based cross-cultural competency in order to understand the culture of minority groups including the homosexuals and to increase mutual interacting skills among heterogeneous groups.
Fourthly, effort on attitude improvement to multi-cultural people is also required. Since a human rights- oriented school culture was confirmed to be a characteristic variable to alleviate the negative effect to negative attitude in some parts, it is thought to be significantly affected by various institutions for school operation. Accordingly, the systematic operation and execution with backup by the human right-based program should be especially treated importantly in attitude improvement on the multi-cultural people.