Relationships between body concept and clothing attitudes of blind and visually handicapped adolescents

The purpose of this research was to compare the relationships between body concept and clothing attitudes of blind and visually handicapped adolescents. The instruments used in this research were three subscales (Special Attention, Management, and Social Approval) of the Importance of Clothing Questionnaire developed by Dr. Anna M. Creekmore, et al., and the Body Concept Questionnaire developed by the researcher. Data were collected from 29 blind and visually handicapped adolescents, ranging from 14 to 19 years of age, at the Virginia School for the Deaf and Blind in Staunton, Virginia.

A factor analysis was used to determine the two underlying constructs of the Body Concept Questionnaire. These two constructs, self-consciousness and body satisfaction, were then correlated with the summed scores of the three subscales and then with the 33 individual items of the Importance of Clothing Questionnaire, by Pearson product moment correlations.

Two of the six null hypotheses were rejected: relationships were found between self-consciousness and attitudes toward clothing management, and between self-consciousness and the social approval provided by clothing of blind and visually handicapped adolescents. A positive intercorrelation was indicated between the two subscales, Management and Social Approval. Significant correlation coefficients were found between the five items of the Body Concept Questionnaire and the 33 items of the Importance of Clothing Questionnaire.

Relationships were shown between body concept and selected clothing attitudes of the blind and visually handicapped adolescents who took part in this study.