Attitudes towards People with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) across Socio-demographic Groups in Russia

Over the past decades, the problem of people with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) has become increasingly relevant in society. It is related to the increasing amount of people diagnosed with ASD. This research studies the social attitudes towards this phenomenon and people who are prone to these diseases. The goal of the current study is to understand what social attitude towards people with these disorders is, and how it differs depending on various social groups: people of various degree of involvement to ASD, age, gender and type of settlement. The method of data collection is a quantitative survey through online-questionnaires. The main criteria for the sample are age, type of settlement, gender and the degree of experience of communication with people with ASD. The amount of people questioned is 1297. The methods of analysis used are principal component method, hierarchal cluster analysis, multinominal logistic regression and crosstabs. In the result there are 5 typre of social attitudes: Interested and Helping, Helping but not Sympathetic, Neutral related, Rejecting but Sympathetic, Aggressive and Rejective. There are proven significant correlations of attitudes with involvement to ASD and gender.