Journal of Biosciences and Medicines

Volume 3, Issue 12 (December 2015)

ISSN Print: 2327-5081   ISSN Online: 2327-509X

Google-based Impact Factor: 0.51  Citations  

Negative Stereotyping Attitudes towards Mental Illness: Is It Culturally Related?

HTML  XML Download Download as PDF (Size: 329KB)  PP. 32-39  
DOI: 10.4236/jbm.2015.312006    4,330 Downloads   6,918 Views  Citations
Author(s)

ABSTRACT

Background: Stigma of mental illness is often related to attitude studies in social science research, cross-cultural psychology and education in social behaviour. Majority of these studies used opinion on mental illness to examine attitudes. Method: A cross-sectional survey was presented to 208 registered nurses in Australia. Principal component analyses (with oblique rotation) were used to identify underlying dimensionality in the correlations of items for negative stereotyping attitudes. Subscale score variations were analysed across nurse type and ethnicity to examine the discriminant validity of the subscales. Results: Principal component analysis (PCA) revealed one dimension accounting for 50.5% of the variations within items for negative stereotyping. Developed as scale, labelled as “Dislike Attributed to Mental Illness (DISL)”, reliability analysis indicated high internal consistency with alpha coefficient of .93. Chinese general nurses scored highest on the DISL scale than the other three groups: Chinese psychiatric nurses, Anglo general and Anglo psychiatric nurses. Conclusion: Psychometric evaluation of the Dislike Attributed to Mental Illness (DISL) indicates that it is a reliable scale for measuring negative stereotyping attitudes towards mental illness. The main statistical significance was due to nurse ethnicity.

Share and Cite:

Ku, T. and Ha, M. (2015) Negative Stereotyping Attitudes towards Mental Illness: Is It Culturally Related?. Journal of Biosciences and Medicines, 3, 32-39. doi: 10.4236/jbm.2015.312006.

Copyright © 2024 by authors and Scientific Research Publishing Inc.

Creative Commons License

This work and the related PDF file are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.