Biases against the elderly and people with disabilities can lead to discriminatory behaviors. One way to conceptualize attitudes toward the elderly and people with disabilities is through the differentiation of explicit (conscious) and implicit (unconscious) factors. Although both explicit and implicit attitudes and biases contribute to the full…

With the rapid aging of the population, strategies that can be incorporated into the curriculum are needed, including social work and medicine. Over the past 20 years, pedagogical strategies to improve attitudes toward older adults and gerontological practice along with knowledge about aging have been tested. Instructors are seeking methods that…

Japan launched the Long-term Care Insurance program in 2000, and ratified the United Nations' Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in 2014. Japan has been taking significant steps to support their elderly population and individuals with disabilities. However, information is lacking on the understanding and opinions of either of…

Research suggests that university students tend to hold negative attitudes about older adults. However, there is some evidence to suggest that these ageist attitudes can be challenged and changed through curricular intervention. The current study was designed to determine whether the "Activities of Older Adults" exercise as part of a…

Society is ageing. In Europe, the ageing of the population is a recurrent and discussed theme. The impact of the ageing of the population is varied and transversal in different fields. The increase in the number of elderly people implies an increase in the levels of dependence and, consequently, more sanitary, physical, and human resources. Also,…

The Relating to Older People Evaluation (ROPE) is a 20-item questionnaire that measures positive and negative ageist behaviors that people may engage in during everyday life. In this article, we report the first findings from several administrations of the ROPE along with initial psychometric information on the instrument. Respondents were college…

Increasing life expectancies and more years spent living with chronic illnesses mean that increasing numbers of older adults will require nursing care. However, most nurses prefer not to work with older adults, and many nursing students have limited knowledge and negative attitudes towards aging and older adults. This study examined the knowledge…

According to gerontological thought, an important part of senior citizens' disabilities are products of their social exclusion rather than factors associated with their physical or mental health. How these exclusions come about was the purpose of the research reported in this article. The study was conducted among 682 Chilean university students…

A total of 227 college students from Joliet, Illinois in the USA and Shanghai in the People's Republic of China (PRC) answered open-ended questions on their perception of being old. Topics also included participant's knowledge about older adults' regular activities, social policies and benefits for senior citizens, the happiest and the most…

Explores generational differences in social relationships: college students and senior citizens two generations apart in age estimated the probabilities of each of 30 behaviors for each of 14 pairs of relationships varying in their closeness and in their sex composition. (CM)

Extending research on age norms in adults, the development of the knowledge of two components of the cultural concept of biography, biographical salience of and age norms for life events was studied from late childhood to early adulthood in Study 1 and across adulthood in Study 2. The largest increase in knowledge was found between ages 8 and 12,…

Risk-taking attitudes and behaviors among young and elderly adults were investigated. Elderly subjects, from both a nursing home and the community, and college students responded to choice dilemmas involving aged central characters. Each subject responded twice, once under "self" instructions, and once as the "average elderly person" would…

Many people hold negative attitudes toward older adults, and these attitudes often are associated with negative behavior toward the old. To explore the behavioral correlates of attitudes toward the elderly, 105 male and female college students, with a mean age of 24.5 years, participated in a two-phase experiment. During phase one, all subjects…

Studied the perceptions, expectations, and attitudes toward aging among students of religion and their graduate counterparts by means of structured interviews. Results revealed students had more positive attitudes toward young than old people, relatively low gerontological knowledge, and negative biases toward the aged. (RC)

Attitudes toward aging among 142 full-time students and 216 graduates at three urban campuses of a religious college were assessed. Respondent subgroups included rabbis, educators, cantors, and communal service workers. Social attitudes were measured by the Aging Semantic Differential (Rosencranz and McNevin, 1969). Respondents rated 32 dimensions…