Predicting counseling psychologists attitudes and clinical judgments with respect to older adults

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine age, gender, training and experience in aging issues, fear of death, and multicultural competence in predicting counseling psychologists’ global attitudes toward older adults and specific clinical judgments concerning a case vignette of an older client. A national sample of 364 practicing counseling psychologists participated in the study. Participants completed a demographic measure, Polizzi's refined version of the Aging Semantic Differential (Polizzi, 2003), a survey of professional bias based on a clinical vignette of a 70-year-old woman (James & Haley, 1995), the Collett–Lester Fear of Death Scale 3.0 (Lester, & Abdel-Khalek, 2003), the Multicultural Counseling Knowledge and Awareness Scale (MCKAS; Ponterotto, Gretchen, Utsey, Rieger, & Austin, 2002), and a Training and Experience Questionnaire. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses were used to investigate the extent to which the selected variables predicted more favorable attitudes toward older adults and less professional bias toward an older client beyond prediction by age and gender. Results revealed that older age and higher total scores on the MCKAS predicted less professional bias in clinical judgments. Gender was a significant predictor of global attitudes toward older adults. Findings suggest that multicultural knowledge, awareness, and skills are important in working with older adults.

Keywords:

• ageism
• clinical judgments
• fear of death
• multicultural competence