ATTITUDES TOWARD THE ELDERLY: IDENTIFYING PROBLEMATIC USAGE OF AGEIST AND OVEREXTENDED TERMINOLOGY IN RESEARCH INSTRUCTIONS

Kenneth G. Polizzi · Richard J. Millikin

50 citations0/0 files storedEducational Gerontology

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

No open-access location is known for this record yet.

Literature note Cite in a project Citation map

Aging and Gerontology Research Psychometric Methodologies and Testing Social and Intergroup Psychology

Abstract

Many problems have recently been identified and discussed concerning the assessment of attitudes toward the elderly. One problem is the use of ageist and overextended terminology to describe people in late adulthood, particularly in research studies that have attempted to measure attitudes toward that age segment. The present paper posits that using such stereotypical language during the research process, especially during the data gathering process, creates bias in attitudes toward individuals in late adulthood and affects the accuracy of results obtained from those studies. With that position as a guide, the purpose of this study was to uncover possible differences and effects that stereotypical descriptions of the elderly population may cause by using ageist terminology in any part of the data gathering process, specifically during the instruction and questionnaire phases of the study. Using Polizzi's (April, 2001) refined version of the Aging Semantic Differential on a sample of 142 undergraduate students, it was hypothesized that the two ageist descriptive categories (i.e., "old" and "elderly) would contribute to significantly different attitude scores than the "70-85 years of age" category. This hypothesis was supported when several significant differences were found among the three descriptive categories. A second hypothesis stated that attitude scores would be significantly more positive toward people in the "70-85 years of the age" category than the other two categories. This hypothesis was also supported. The descriptive category known as "old" was the least positively viewed group, while the "70-85 years of age" category was viewed the most positively. It was concluded that ageist language does indeed have an effect on attitude scores. Implications of the findings, as well as recommendations for future research, are cited.

Paper brief

Loading…

Cite this work

Citation unavailable for this work.

BibTeX RIS CSL-JSON

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Citations in this library

Citation map →

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 50 citations exist upstream.

References

1961Attitudes toward old people: The development of a scale and an examination of correlates.1969A Factor Analysis of Attitudes Toward the Aged 1988Attitudes toward older and younger adults: A meta-analysis.2015Educational Psychology 1980Aging Labels: The Decline of Control and the Fall of Self‐Esteem 1971Perceptions of Old People: A Review of Research Methodologies and Findings 1986Contact With and Perceptions of the Elderly 1993Ageist language in psychological research.

Cited by

2011Effect of Interdisciplinary Service Learning Experience for Audiology and Speech-Language Pathology Students Working With Adults With Dementia 2009Factors That Influence Dental Students’ Attitudes About Older Adults 2008Attitudes Toward Older Adults: A Reexamination of Two Major Scales 2020Ageism and Age Discrimination in the Family: Applying an Intergenerational Critical Consciousness Approach 2010Assessment of the Refined Aging Semantic Differential: Recommendations for Enhancing Validity

Explore the map →

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.