Getting the cues of elder abuse: an identification through dependency and modernization

Abstract

Purpose In the present era of modernization, the social group members interact with each other with selfish and unselfish intents. However, the unselfish means and ends build a long term relationship among people. On the other hand, selfish ends bud out unethical means such as abuses, violence and fights. The situation becomes tough when the same becomes evident among the family relationship and as a consequence the elderly are being treated unfairly. Out of such cases, some are reported and the majority of them remain unreported, which eventually becomes the cause of concern for the social welfare agencies. Thus, this paper aims to examine the elder abuse (EA) tendency in metro, non-metro and religious cities. Design/methodology/approach For this study, a mixed-method approach is used to develop survey instruments, validate findings using qualitative and quantitative data sources for better generalization of results. The present study explored and confirmed the related factors using exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis for the establishment of a valid scale of EA. Further, the difference of perceptions among the elders for abuse across the metro, non-metro and religious cities was statistically checked using the ANOVA and post hoc techniques. Findings The present study identified the traces of EA and created a comprehensive understanding of it. The present study manifests the prevailing practices of EA in society by discussing the demerits of dependency and modernization. Moreover, the present study assesses the pervasiveness and the repercussion of dependency and the impact of modernization on EA followed by a discussion on how the victim elders may handle the situation. In the present study, a scale is developed to identify EA because of the dependency of the elderly and the modernization of society. Originality/value Some exclaiming thoughts such as the dependency of elders elevate the chances of EA on one side, while modernization of society hampers the social/family bonding leading to EA. The inconsistent development across the region has created modernization as a significant factor for EA. The level and depth of modernization across locations such as metro, non-metro and religious cities are the cause for varying degrees of EA. Based on the literature review, the present study has sensed the presence of EA in society at large by developing a scale for the aforesaid purpose.

Travesty of Life Elders Abuse an Inquiry of Physical and Psychological Abuse

“…The Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin Measure of Sampling Adequacy and valued as 0.931 which is higher than 0.5 assuring that sample is adequate for exploratory factor analysis. The χ2 (Chi) square value in Bartlett's Test of Sphericity was obtained as 5810.492 at df = 0.406 is found significant at p = 0.01 affirming that the correlation matrix is an identity matrix (Bajpai, 2017). Further, on analysis of Eigen values the three factors were valued more than 1 as 9.501, 6.577 and 3.262 enabling the sound extraction of factors.…”

“…The composite reliability (CR) of each factor is also found larger than 0.7 in Table 3. Together AVE and CR had fulfilled the sufficient condition of validity establishment of measurement scale (Bajpai, 2017).…”

“…In present study, the second survey tabulated data was used for application CFA by using AMOS v 23.0. The analysis outcomes of confirmatory factor analysis results shown the χ2 test resulted as 262.877 at p = 0.261 (p > 0.05) and CMIN/ Df was 1.056 (ranged between 1-5) at df = 249 establishing badness of fit index (Bajpai, 2017;Dubey et al, 2019). The CFA results circumscribed the imperative indices GFI = 0.944, AGFI = 0.932, CFI = 0.999, RMSEA = 0.013, P close = 1.000, TLI = 0.998 and PCFI = 0.901 were in its acceptable range (Bajpai, 2017).…”

“…Primarily, the coefficient of determination i.e. R Squared = 0.836 is sufficiently large in predicting the understudy independent variable of elder abuse affect by 83.6% due to age, gender and composite effect (Bajpai, 2017). This leads to proceed for hypotheses testing.…”

“…During focus group interview, the participants were informed about the purpose and assured for non-disclosure of identity to execute the discussion. The questions for dependent variable were adopted from previous study (Bajpai et al, 2020 ). Initially, there were 19 items but after an interview, the items reached to 31 in the questionnaire by extracting from the literature.…”