A Chinese version of Kogan's Attitude toward Older People Scale: Reliability and validity assessment

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Abstract

Background

Taiwan is facing the dilemma of a rapidly growing elderly population and there is a perceived need for greater gerontological education. Several universities have recently started providing elective gerontological certification programs. In order to provide useful and sufficient information to increase students’ knowledge and attitudes, to develop a reliable and valid instrument is essential and helpful for faculty as well as the program director to pinpoint students’ strengths and weaknesses.

Objective

To assess the reliability and validity of a Chinese version of Kogan's Attitudes toward Older People (KAOP) among medical and nursing students at a medical university.

Method

A two-phase data collection design was used. Two weeks following the first completion, another KAOP form, was given. Content validity, construct validity, internal consistency, and stability reliability were assessed. The final sample consisted of 275 students.

Results

Scores were between 34 and 238. The study sample reported slightly positive attitudes (144.3 ± 17.89), with half of the subjects (50.1%) above average. All of the 34 items were found to have significant item-to-total correlations (p < .05). Two factors were extracted, Appreciation and Prejudice. The Prejudice and Appreciation contributed 33.6% and 21.1% to the variance. The Cronbach's alpha was .82 for the total scale (.83 for Prejudice, .81 for Appreciation). Stability was 0.86 for Prejudice and 0.91 for Appreciation.

Conclusions

The Chinese version of the KAOP can be considered reliable and valid scale for assessing the attitudes toward older people.

Introduction

According to the Taiwan census, the elderly population will approach 20% within the next 20 years. This enhances the need for skilled and experienced healthcare providers, in many health care settings, who can address and meet the needs of older people. Physicians and nurses have a pivotal role as providers of care for older people and are uniquely positioned to influence the quality of their care (Stevens and Herbert, 1997). Therefore, healthcare providers in Taiwan need to increase their direct and indirect work with the elderly. However, previous studies have indicated that healthcare providers do not enjoy taking care of the elderly due to ignorance and poor attitude (Palmore, 1999). As the population grows older, attitudes towards the elderly require evaluating. However, no such exploration on health-related students’ attitudes towards older people has yet been carried out in Taiwan. In order to provide better care to the elderly population, exploring the students attitudes toward older people is a vital concern. The Kogan's Attitude toward Older People (KAOP) scale has been found to possess high reliability and validity values in several international research studies; however, there has not been any verification of the Chinese version. This was the need that this study sought to fill. Consequently, it could be used as a measurement of KAOP for both health-related students and clinicians.

Section snippets

Participants

Potential participants were medical and nursing undergraduates at a central Taiwan Medical University who may provide health care to the elderly in the future. Three hundred and eleven questionnaires were given out, but the final sample consisted of 275 students (88.4%). The students who were recruited for this study were as follows: who were able to speak and understand Chinese, whose major were either medicine or nursing, and who were willing to participate in this study. The Chung Shan

Demographic data

275 students returned the KAOP. Demographic data of students are summarized in Table 1. Medical students were in the majority (n = 145), as were sophomores. The sample mean score was 144.30 (S.D. = 17.89), with approximately half of the subjects (50.1%) scoring above the mean. As shown in Table 1, females had higher scores (more positive attitudes), nursing students scored higher than medical students, and sophomores rated higher than seniors.

Content validity

The content validity index (CVI) was used to determine

Discussion

The Chinese version of the KAOP indicates good content validity because the CVI was .92. Construct validity was supported in the factor analysis. The factor analysis of the KAOP shows two factors. Two factors were explained 54.7% of the variance. The 54.7% of the variance seems not high but acceptable when compared with Greek version of KAOP including 6 factors with explaining the 41.5% of the variance (Lambrinou et al., 2005). There are some similarities with other studies, such as the items

Conclusions

Psychometric analysis of the Chinese version of KAOP scale indicates high reliability (internal consistency and stability) and good content and construct validity. Results also reveal two different factors underlying student attitudes toward older people—one related to prejudice and the other associated with appreciation. Based on these findings, it is recommended that the Chinese version of the KAOP be incorporated or adapted by health-related professions as one of the tools used to assess the

Conflict of interest

None declared.

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to express their appreciation to Nathan Kogan and Dr. Carol Deets for their advanced advice. This research was partially supported by Research Grant CSMU-96-OM-B-52 from Chung Shan Medical School, Taichung, Taiwan.

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