This study was designed to investigate and compare attitudes toward the elderly of African American freshman college students at a historically black college and white freshman college students at a predominantly white college. In addition, the students' spiritual well-being, gender, and knowledge about aging were integrated to predict college students' attitudes toward the elderly. The original sample consisted of 299 individuals who filled out the survey questionnaire during class time with 149 students at the predominantly African American college and 150 at the white college. All 299 questionnaires were returned. Delimitation factors caused the final sample to consist of 234 subjects. / The students completed the Aging Semantic Differential Scale (ASD), the Facts on Aging Quiz (FAQ), and the Spiritual Well-Being Scale (SWB). The ASD Scale is an attitude assessment instrument consisting of a list of 32 bipolar adjective pairs in Likert scale format. The FAQ consists of 25 true-false statements and is designed to cover the basic physical, mental, and social aspects of aging. The SWB Scale is a 20-item self report scale consisting of religious well-being and existential subscales. / Results showed that freshman college students overall maintained positive attitudes toward the elderly with white students reporting more positive attitudes. Also, both African American and white college students showed a consistent lack of knowledge about aging with whites having a slightly higher score. Both groups of college students possessed a strong sense of spiritual well-being with white college students scoring higher than African American college students. Answers to the religious demographic questions indicated that over half of the college students surveyed are presently active with a religious group. When using regression to predict attitudes toward the elderly, gender was not significant for either race; however, spiritual well-being and knowledge were for the white students, and spiritual well-being was significant for the African-American students. Recommendations for teaching about aging were made. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 56-04, Section: A, page: 1271. / Major Professor: Ruth Pestle. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1995.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_77422 |
| Contributors | Tanksley, Rita Jean Worrell., Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text |
| Format | 153 p. |
| Rights | On campus use only. |
| Relation | Dissertation Abstracts International |
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