Perceptions Of Families Towards Media Support For Their Children With Disabilities During The COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

The study aimed to reveal the perceptions of families towards media support for their children with disabilities during the COVID-19 pandemic, in Dammam City, Saudi Arabia. The triangulation approach gives depth understanding and analyzing quantitative and qualitative data. The researchers distributed a questionnaire to (78)  of persons with disabilities families. A semi-structured interview was administered to (10) families participated in the questionnaire to monitor the reality and make suggestions for improving media support for children with disabilities from the point of view of their families, and the psychometric characteristics of the study tools were ascertained, the data were analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively. The quantitative results showed that there was a weakness of media support to the children with Disabilities. Their perceptions were high for proposing for improvement. The qualitative analysis showed agreement with the results obtained from the quantitative analysis. The qualitative data analysis revealed four important factors about the participants' perceptions of media support for children with disabilities, namely: the factual weakness of media support, proposals for improvement, the importance of the diversity of media programs, and the diversity preferred media platforms. The study recommended activating media support for children with Disabilities.