Children's Attitudes Toward the Elderly: Educational Implications

Abstract

The CATE (Children's Attitudes Toward the Elderly) was administered to 180 children, 20 at each level from age 3 to age 11. Results suggest that children at all age levels have limited knowledge of and contact with older people. Few children gave positive responses about growing old themselves; most did not perceive being old as positive. Attitudes of children toward the elderly suggest a mixture of positive feelings of affect and either stereotypic or negative attitudes about the physical aspects of age. It was determined that children's concepts of age increase in accuracy as they increase in age. Educational implications include providing accurate information about the elderly and actual contact with older people, enabling children to assess their perceptions of the aging process and how aging affects them, and exposing children to an unbiased look at the attributes, behaviors, and characteristics of the elderly in a wide variety of roles in order to avoid or extinguish the formation of stereotypic, negative attitudes.

Attitudes toward the Elderly among Nursing Students in Korea

“…As Seefeldt et al (1977) indicated, educating children to develop positive attitudes toward the elders is a life long process. We need to facilitate this process to continue toward the positive direction through nursing education.…”

“…Attitudes are thought to be learned by trial and error or by teaching process of socialization (Seefeldt, et al, 1977). We need to focus on making this socialization useful in changing students attitudes toward the elderly.…”

Intergenerational programming: attitudes of children and perceptions of older adult participants

“…Evaluative or affective attitude contents represent an individual's feelings and subjective evaluations of the attitude object while intentional or conative attitude contents represent the actions proposed by an individual based upon his or her beliefs and subjective evaluations towards the attitude object. These components of attitude, while not being accepted by all researchers, are the basis of attitude measures in much of the literature on attitudes of children toward the elderly (Aday et al, 1991;Seefeldt, 1987b;Dellman-Jenkins, Lambert, Fruit, & Dinero, 1986;Knox et al, 1986;Marks et al, 1985;Baggett, 1981;Jantz, Seefeldt, Galper, & Serock, 1977;Seefeldt et al, 1977a;Thomas & Yamamoto, 1975;Rosencranz & McNevin, 1969;Golde & Kogan, 1959).…”

“…Old people were evaluated more positively on the affective dimension but more negatively on the cognitive dimension than were young people. Similarly, Seefeldt et al , (1977a) and Jantz et al , (1977) found among children three to eleven years of age, positive affective feelings but negative physical attributes towards the elderly and overall negative attitudes toward older adults. These results are supported by Serock et al , (1977) where children attributed more negative physical qualities and more positive affective qualities to the elderly.…”

“…Research indicates that attitudes obtained during childhood and early adolescence remain an influence throughout the life cycle (Aday et al, 1991;Seefeldt et al, 1977a).…”