The Effects of Sociodemographic Characteristics on Chinese Elders′ Perception of the Image of Ageing

Abstract

A positive image of elderly people is found to be contributive to successful ageing. This paper reports a study that aims at revising and validating Image of Ageing Scale in a modern Chinese context and finding out how socio-demographic factors have impacted the latter's perception of the image of ageing. Confirmatory factor analysis supported the five-factor model suggested from exploratory factor analysis which produced good psychometric properties. Based on the two-cluster solution from the twostep cluster analysis on the image of ageing, results of both the Chi-square and the one-way ANOVA tests confirmed that age, residence location, marital status, working status, living arrangement, neighborhood relationships, illness and daily activity were significant predictors of elders' image of ageing. Logistic results further indicated that some predictors were not statistically significant in the multivariate analysis, whilst being urban, lonely, suffering from severe chronic illnesses, and showing little interests in daily activities, were identified as potent factors resulting in a negative image of ageing. Other than suggesting the Revised Chinese Version of the Image of Ageing Scale (IAS-C) could be used in a Chinese society, our findings also led to a number of recommendations to promoting a positive image among the Chinese elderly.

The Asian Conference on Aging & Gerontology 2022: Official Conference Proceedings

“…In particular, the study concluded that positive marital relationships offer the greatest means of safeguard from health and mental disparities. In tandem with this results, a Chinese study by Chow and Bai (2011) Chinese ageing population. In addition, further evidence from the same study observed that gender had non-significant difference on self-perception towards ageing.…”

“…Previous studies have linked bio-social characteristics of gender, age and self-perceived age with self-perception towards ageing. A study by Chow and Bai, (2011) indicated insignificant difference between gender and self-perception towards ageing among Chinese older adults.…”

Culture as a moderator of cognitive age and travel motivation/perceived risk relations among seniors

“…However, the changes in family structure, modernization and Westernization that have taken place in the past few decades, whether in Asian countries or in Asian immigrant communities overseas, have somewhat challenged the traditional perceptions of older people and aging (Giles et al, 2003). There is evidence of a perceived erosion in the strength of filial piety (Chow, 1999;Chow and Bai, 2010). Recent studies challenge earlier findings that attitudes toward aging are more positive in Asian than in Western cultures (Tang et al, 2004).…”

Factors associated with attitudes toward the elderly in a sample of elderly caregivers

“…Other studies showed associations between depressive symptoms and perceptions related to aging in older participants, not caregivers. These studies used different instruments to evaluate depression: GDS-15 and -30 items (Chachamovich et al, 2008;Kalfoss et al, 2010;Lai and Tong, 2012;Sindi et al, 2012;Janecková et al, 2013;Lucas-Carrasco et al, 2013), the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale -CES-D (Lu et al, 2010;Bryant et al, 2012), the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale -HADS (Shewkin et al, 2014) and the Mini International Neuropsychiatric Interview -MINI (Thorpe et al, 2014). All of them considered that the evaluation of depressive symptoms was an important variable related to perceptions about aging.…”