Previous research has failed to identify a strong relationship between parental role involvement and self-esteem of parents despite theoretical and intuitive support for the prediction. An explanatory model of the interaction between role occupancy, psychological centrality of the role, and self-esteem among older parents was presented. Data from the National Survey of Families and Households (NSFH) were used to test a path model examining the effects of the roles of parent, spouse, and worker, as well income, age, sex, and health on self-esteem. The data failed to support the model as presented. Role involvement did not affect self-esteem and psychological centrality had a direct effect instead of the proposed interactive effect. Health was the strongest predictor of self-esteem. In contrast to previous research, age negatively affected self-esteem in this sample. / Ph. D.

No description available.

This study investigated the relationship between life satisfaction and death concern in the elderly as a function of age, self-reported health status, and religious involvement in order to examine the concept of ego integrity as porposed by Erikson (1963). Eighty-one subjects were recruited from the Good Samaritan Retirement Village in Kissimmee, Florida, and were divided into two groups: (1) the younger-old group which consisted of 42 individuals between the ages of 65 and 75, and (2) the older-old group which consisted of 39 individuals over the age of 75 years old. All subjects were administered the Life Satisfaction Index A (Neugarten, Havighurst, & Tobin, 1961), the Death concern Scale (Dickstein, 1972), a self-reported health measure and religious involvement measure developed by the investigators. Two factors from the Death Concern Scale, the negative evaluation of the reality of Death and the conscious contemplation od death, were also examined in relation to life satisfaction, self-reported health staus, and religious involvement. The results obtained through Pearson product-moment correlation coefficients demonstrated significant inverse relationships between life satisfaction and death concern and between life satisfaction and the conscious contemplation of death for both the older-old and younger-old groups. Self-reported health status was also noted to be significantly related to lfe satisfaction and death concern for the younger-old group. analyses of t tests for independent groups yielded no significant differences on the six dependent measures between the two age groups. No significant sex differences were noted for either age group. The results support the concept of ego integrity indicating that those individuals who are more satisified with their lives also tend to be less concerned about death. The measures utilized in this study were noted to be reliable across age groups. It is suggested that future research examine differences between present and past life satisfaction in relation to death attitudes.

The purpose of this study was to investigate possible relationships between clothing satisfaction and self-concept of a select group of women age 65 and older. An increase in the number of elderly women in the population with special clothing needs led to the development of this research. Past research indicates that elderly women are dissatisfied with purchased clothing, yet prior to this study it was not known if or how the dissatisfactions were related to their self-concepts. The sample consisted of 81 female residents of a retirement community in Salem, Virginia, and members of senior centers located in Floyd, Christiansburg, and Radford, Virginia. A questionnaire was developed for this research because a suitable one did not exist. It consisted of demographic variables, clothing satisfaction statements, and self-concept statements. Demographic data were collected to describe the sample and to compare it to the elderly population. Clothing satisfaction statements assessed satisfaction with clothing styles, fit, color, acquisition, cost, and care. An adaptation of Fitts' Tennessee Self Concept Scale was utilized to measure physical, personal, and social components of the self. A frequency distribution was used to tabulate the data. A correlation analysis determined the relationships between clothing satisfaction variables and self-concept variables. The results of this study indicated that elderly women are dissatisfied with clothing on the mass market. Significant relationships were found between total self-concept and satisfaction with clothing styles, between social self and satisfaction with clothing cost, and between physical self and overall clothing satisfaction. It was found that no relationship existed between overall clothing satisfaction and total self-concept, but the researcher concluded that because of the significant relationships clothing satisfaction indirectly influences self-concept. / M.S.

The purpose of this study was twofold: to test the Competence Model for Normal Aging and to generate valid and reliable indices of mental health outcomes in elderly clients. A correlational descriptive design accommodated the psychometric assessment of the instruments with a causal modeling methodology. The relationship between competence and self-esteem was the primary focus. Theoretical model testing was used to test the causal relationships between competence and three estimates of cognition: causal attributions, self-efficacy, and value. Associated demographic variables, age, and gender, were included in the model. Well elders (n = 137) living independently in Tucson participated in the study by completing 9 instruments within a 40-minute testing period. The mean age of the group was 73 (sd = 7.9). A quarter of the sample was at least 80 years old. All participants were caucasian, with more than twice the number of females than males. Most participants were married or widowed. The instruments met validity and reliability criteria in varying degrees. Hypothesis 1 was supported in both the separate success and failure models and the total sample theoretical model. Self-efficacy (β = .48) and value (β = .27) predicted competence (R² = .42). The social subscale of competence was strongly predicted by the same variables (β = .53, β = .26; R² = .39). The same predictors were evident in the total sample theoretical model (β = .52; β = .25; R² = .38). Hypothesis 2 was partially supported. Self-efficacy predicted total competence (β = .49; R² = .30) and the social dimension of competence (β = .59; R² = .32). Hypothesis 2 was minimally supported in the total sample theoretical model by self-efficacy (β = .29) predicting the social component of competence (R² = .44). Hypothesis 3 was most strongly supported. Competence predicted self-esteem under multiple conditions (βs averaged .43). The associated demographic and gender variables made minimal contributions to the model, except under failure conditions. Not being married and being a male negatively impacted upon competence (β = -.21; β = -.39; R² = .31). Both theoretical and empirical model results have similar explained variances. The theoretical model provided key information regarding the process of self-esteem, and the empirical model provided a guide for clinicians to measure mental health outcomes.

M.A. (Social Work) / In recent years the increasing number of assaults, murder and other forms of victimization of the elderly in South Africa have become a topic widely reported by the mass media and frequently discussed in communities. The threatening of the personal safety of an aged person is a matter of great concern with possible repercussions on the lifestyle of the individual concerned. In this regard Harris & Cole (1980:383) accurately state "The fear of crime greatly diminishes the quality of life for large number of older people and restricts their mobility. Much of this fear may came from the fact that older people are acutely aware of their vulnerability to victimization." The aims of this study are: to determine how the aged, living in Benoni, experience their personal safety; to determine how the experience of their personal safety influences the daily activities of the aged; to determine factors in personal safety of which the aged should be informed...

Faculty of Education and the Arts. School of Social Sciences. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 247-276)

published_or_final_version / Criminology / Master / Master of Social Sciences

The major purpose of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of a stress-inoculation treatment and an equally credible attention-placebo control in alleviating self-reported test anxiety and in facilitating intellectual performance in nontraditional (aged 50 and over) college students. Many studies have demonstrated the efficacy of cognitive-behavioral approaches in the treatment of test anxiety among young college students. The literature suggests that persons returning to school after a long absence who have subsequently enrolled as college students experience greater test anxiety and decrements in test performance in evaluative situations than their younger counterparts.

The aim of this thesis was to investigate inter-individual variability on cognitive task performance in normal older adults. In a review of the cognitive aging literature, the implications of a differential perspective were drawn out in order to establish a theoretical and methodological basis for an investigation into variability. A number of regularly occurring patterns, identified on the basis of available reports in the literature, were used to develop a model of variability (the shuttle model). The empirically-based model was located broadly within a neuropsychological framework, and derived explanatory power from the tenets of brain reserve capacity (BRC) theory. It served to describe the bulge in interindividual variability due to aging (the shuttle bulge), and the shifting occurrence of the bulge in relation to the age axis due to cohort and task-related influences (the shuttle shift). A two phase research study was conducted in order to test hypotheses derived from the model. Phase 1 comprised between-groups analyses of normative data covering a broad range of neuropsychological tests in the domains of attention, memory, language, visual and hand motor skills, in order to examine the progression of variability effects across the adult age range. Phase 2 constituted between and within-groups analyses of normative data from a more limited number of neuropsychological tests. It included the examination of raw score distributions and the characteristics of outliers, and was undertaken to explore more closely the nature of the variability phenomena detected in the first phase of the analysis. Taken together, the results of both phases of the investigation revealed statistically significant variability effects in support of the shuttle model. There was a consistent pattern of increased variability in association with older age regardless of functional modality; frequently, in association with later old age, there was also a subsequent decrease in variability (the shuttle bulge). The age of onset of the initial increase in variability occurred earlier or later (the shuttle shift) as a function of four factors: education, gender, task challenge and age-sensitivity of task. The finding of an earlier onset of variability effects for low education, male gender, high task challenge and high age-sensitivity of task was interpreted in terms of BRC threshold theory. The clinical and social implications of the outcome were discussed with special emphasis on the need for a differential perspective on aging, as a complement to the prevailing normative tradition. It was concluded that the shuttle model has considerable heuristic value. It presents an integrative framework for understanding existing variability data and provides clear indications for future research.