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Abstract
Older persons are living longer and healthier and, thus, are capable of being more productive and less dependent. Despite this trend, young people persistently hold the age-old negative stereotypes about older persons. The goals of this study were to develop a valid, reliable measure of social values of older people and to assess its utility as predictor to career choice by social work students. The data were collected from 204 social work students enrolled in a southeastern university. Based on the original 13-item aging opinion instrument (Kafer, Rakowski, & Lachman, Citation1980), the social values of older people (SVOP) scale was modified by changing linguistic expression and adding several items relevant to social value of older people. At the initial screening stage, the internal consistency of the newly created 20-items SVOP scale was found to be acceptable (alpha = .80). But, item analyses identified several deviant items to the overall scale. The exploratory factor analysis with trimmed 16 items produced the 5-factor model that captures key dimensions of the SVOP: contribution to society, utilization of knowledge and experiences, intergenerational relationship, age-integrated neighborhood, and contribution to policy making. This 5-factor model was also confirmed by the confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) with acceptable fit index (e.g., CFI = .92). Finally, this study concluded that, if equipped with accurate knowledge, social work students will perceive older people more positively and will be more likely to have a primary interest to work with older people. Accordingly, this study suggests a greater need for highlighting positive aspects in gerontology educational curriculum for social work students.
Notes
∗Reverse scored items:
—Coefficients alpha with 20 items = 0.80.
—Coefficients alpha with 16 items = 0.82 (items 10, 14, 15, 19 deleted due to lower correlation to overall scale).
—Mean and standard deviation of scale = 79.74 (7.78).
—Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin Measures of Sampling Adequacy = .758.
—Bartlett's Test of Sphericity, Approx. Chi-square = 735.211, df = 120, Sig. = .000.
—Extraction method: Principal Component Analysis.
—Rotation method: Varimax with Kaiser Normalization.
∗p < .05
∗∗p < .01
∗∗∗p < .001