The Impact of Self-Esteem on the Attitudes Towards Homosexuality

Abstract

Diversity is part of our everyday lives. It is present everywhere, so it is present in health care settings also. The medical staff serves all the patients, regardless their gender, their race, their religion, regardless their economic status, sexual orientation, political beliefs, etc. It is very important for the medical staff to accept and respect the diversity. In this way, the quality of offered services will be the same for all the people. Having good attitudes towards homosexual individuals is one of the ways of accepting and respecting human diversity. One of the sources of good attitudes towards homosexuality is the having good self-esteem. The paper aims to analyze the impact of self-esteem on the attitudes toward homosexuality of heterosexual students of Professional Master in Nursing, branch of the Faculty of Natural Sciences. It is used the technique of questionnaire. The measuring instruments are: a)Self-Esteem Scale (Rosenberg, 1965), b)Attitudes Toward Sexual Orientation: An Adaption of Herek’s ATLG Survey (the adaption is made by Benjamin J. Stefonik). The data collected from the questionnaire was analyzed by means of the SPSS program, variant 20. In the study, we had the participation of 77 heterosexual students of Professional Master in Nursing, 40 students frequent the first academic course and 37 students are at the second academic course. The paper concluded that there is positive correlation between heterosexual students’ self-esteem and their attitudes towards homosexuality (Sig.= 0.083). Their self-esteem is not too positive and their attitudes towards homosexuality are not good. The students prejudice the homosexual individuals. It is very important the improvement of self-esteem and the improvement of the attitudes toward homosexuality of heterosexual students of Professional Master in Nursing, branch of the Faculty of Natural Sciences. The improvement of their self-esteem and their attitudes toward homosexuality will influence the quality of their work. There are defined the main strategies in order to improve students’ self-esteem and their attitudes toward homosexuality.