Swedish and English adolescents' attitudes toward the community presence of people with disabilities.

Leung et al. (1998) asked teenagers in Sweden and England how they feel about sharing classrooms, buses, and jobs with people who have intellectual disability.

The team mailed short attitude scales to high-school students in both countries. Sweden has stronger normalization laws, so the authors guessed Swedish teens would be more welcoming.

No teaching or contact program was tested; the survey only measured current views.

Swedish pupils were only a little more positive than English pupils. The gap was smaller than expected and often not statistically reliable.

In plain words, living in a country with better disability policies did not clearly make teens more accepting.

Sheridan et al. (2013) later repeated the same survey style inside England. They found British South Asian teens held more exclusionary views than White British teens. This extends P et al. by showing attitude gaps can be larger within one country than between two countries.

Scior (2011) pooled 75 attitude studies and concluded most are weak descriptive surveys like P et al. The review warns that without controlled interventions we cannot expect big attitude shifts.

Walker et al. (2013) ran a small RCT and got a tiny but real improvement after a 10-minute film. Together these papers show surveys keep finding lukewarm attitudes, while brief interventions can move the needle slightly—something the 1998 survey never tested.

If you plan school inclusion or anti-stigma lessons, do not assume progressive national laws have already done the work for you. Measure each class first, then add brief, evidence-based contact or media activities rather than relying on policy alone.