Black and White College Students' Choices of Descriptors for Older Women and Older Women Relatives

ABSTRACT

Black and white students from two different educational institutions (N = 107) completed demographic information as well as a forty word instrument asking them to rate the words as to applicability regarding older women in general and a chosen older woman relative. Investigators were interested to know if there would be differences in the rating of the words by the two races for the two groups of older women. The most interesting result was the positive words chosen by each race and the “closeness” rating. Blacks chose “beautiful,” “gentle,” and “kind.” Whites chose “experienced” and “fun.” When the words were looked at by categories of positive, neutral, and negative, more positive words were chosen.