Attitudes of Social Work Students towards the Ageism

Abstract

Ageism which is a concept first used in 1969 by Robert Butler, the first director of the National Institute on Aging, can be defined as "a process of systematic stereotyping and discrimination against people because they are old" (Butler, 1995: 35).Turkey's population is growing older and the elderly constitutes an important target group especially in terms of the social work profession. Therefore determining the causes of discriminatory attitudes towards the elderly is extremely important in terms of quality of services provided to the elderly. Starting from this view, the aim of this research is to determine the attitudes of social work students towards the ageism in Turkey and the sociodemographic characteristics that affect these attitudes.The research population consists of social work students in all active departments of social work in 2012-2013 academic year in Turkey; the sample consists of 990 social work students from different universities such as Hacettepe, Selçuk, Ankara, Adnan Menderes, Ba kent, Yalova, Kocaeli and KTO Karatay. 610 of the participants are female and 380 are male.The research data were obtained by using personal information questionnaire which is developed by the researchers and the "Ageism Attitude Scale" which is developed by Vefikuluçay Yılmaz and Terzio lu (2011: 267).As a result of the study, female students have more positive attitudes than male students in the "restricting life of the elderly" sub-dimension of Ageism Attitude Scale; students who are 21 and older have more positive attitudes than students between the age of 17 and 20; students who are in the first grade have more positive attitudes than students in the third and fourth grade in the "negative ageism" sub-dimension; students who say that elderly relatives are important in their lives have more positive attitudes than others in the "restricting life of the elderly"subdimension and students who have taken a course on old age have more negative attitudes than students who didn't have any courses about it.In conclusion, when considering Turkey has started to increase the proportion of elderly in the population, it is important for social workers, which is one of the occupation that undertake the task of planning and providing services for the elderly population, to be informed about old age and to improve the skills for working with the elderly.

Healthcare School Students’ Willingness to Work With the Elderly: Influence of Ageism

“…Although in this study no significant relationship was found between age or class of students and ageism attitude scores, Daba and Kesen (2015) and Köse et al(2015) found that older aged and senior class students were more likely to have lower ageism attitude scores. On the other hand, while Hweidi and Al-Obeistat (2006) and Turan et al (2016) reported that first year students had more favorable attitudes than senior students.…”

“…Other previous research has found that age or studying class play a role in positive ageism scores (Daba & Kesen ,2015;Köse et al, 2015;Hweidi & Al-Obesitat, 2006 ;Hughes et al, 2008;Kızılcı et al, 2013, ;Kulakçı, 2010). Soyuer et al (2010), Bleijenberg et al (2012), Özdemir and Bilgili (2016) and Yılmaz and İnce (2017) reported that age and study year affect ageism scores of students.…”

“…Based on the literature, higher ageism attitudes scores were declared in some research conducted in different groups of people (Bodner et al, 2012;Bergman et al, 2013;Randler et al,2016;Ben-Harush et al). Also Daba and Kesen (2015) and Güven et al(2012) indicated that female students from different schools adopted more positive attitudes towards elderly . On the other hand, more negative attitudes of female nursing students were reported by Köse et al (2015), Şahin and Erdem (2017) and Hweidi and Al-Obesitat (2006).…”

“…The literature reveals that demographics of the students affect the ageism attitude scores. According to some researchers being female is a factor in having higher positive attitudes in terms of ageism (Bodner et al, 2012;Bergman et al, 2013;Randler et al,2016;Ben-Harush et al;Daba & Kesen ,2015 ;Güven et al,2012). On the other hand some other researches have reported non-significant results in ageism attitude scores between female and male groups (Adıbelli et al,2013;Duyan et al, 2016;Yılmaz& İnce ,2017;Özdemir & Bilgili,2016).…”

“…In a study conducted by medical students, it has been determined that a positive attitude towards ageism is effective in the desire to work in the field of elderly care after graduation (Chua et al,2008;Hughes et al, 2008;Wang et al, 2009). Some other research investigated ageism in special work students and have found that there is a relationship between positive ageism attitudes and willingness to work in elderly care (Daba & Kesen, 2015). Also, there are many studies investigating the relationship between ageism attitude and willingness to work in elderly care among nursing students (Yılmaz& İnce ,2017;Altay &Aydın, 2015;Karadağ et al, 2012;.…”