Correlation between life quality and shyness levels of parents with handicapped children

This study aimed at researching into the life quality elements such as age, education, income and physical exercise habits and shyness level of parents with handicapped children. 110 families – 55 of which have handicapped children (18 with mental retardation, 18 with autism and 19 with Down syndrome) and the remaining 55 of which have healthy children – voluntarily participated in the study from the Special Rehabilitation and Education Centers in Samsun, Sakarya and Kastamonu provinces. The “Shyness Scale”, which was adapted into Turkish language and whose validity and reliability study was conducted by Güng?r (2001), and the “Demographic Questionnaire” developed by the researcher were utilized in order to determine the shyness levels. SPSS program was used for data analysis. The t test for independent groups and the ANOVA test were applied in order to define the difference between the groups. This study revealed that the shyness scores of the handicapped parents did not differ according to the variables of the type, age, education level and regular physical activity habits whereas the families which regularly do exercise had lower shyness averages numerically. As a result of the calculation of the correlation coefficients of the data, shyness was found to be having negative correlation (p < 0.05) only with the education level. The family type is positively correlated with education level (p < 0.01) and income level (p < 0.01). Furthermore, the education level has a positively significant correlation with the income level (p < 0.01). On the other hand, exercise habits go down as the age goes up (p < 0.01). As a conclusion, the positive correlations between life quality elements such as age, education, income and physical activity level and shyness levels of parents suggest that, if parents with handicapped children have a more quality life, they see the life through a better window.