A Chinese version of Kogan's Attitude Toward Older People Scale: reliability and validity assessment.

BACKGROUND: Taiwan is facing the dilemma of a rapidly growing elderly population and there is a perceived need for greater gerontological education. Several universities have recently started providing elective gerontological certification programs. In order to provide useful and sufficient information to increase students' knowledge and attitudes, to develop a reliable and valid instrument is essential and helpful for faculty as well as the program director to pinpoint students' strengths and weaknesses.

OBJECTIVE: To assess the reliability and validity of a Chinese version of Kogan's Attitudes toward Older People (KAOP) among medical and nursing students at a medical university.

METHOD: A two-phase data collection design was used. Two weeks following the first completion, another KAOP form, was given. Content validity, construct validity, internal consistency, and stability reliability were assessed. The final sample consisted of 275 students.

RESULTS: Scores were between 34 and 238. The study sample reported slightly positive attitudes (144.3+/-17.89), with half of the subjects (50.1%) above average. All of the 34 items were found to have significant item-to-total correlations (p<.05). Two factors were extracted, Appreciation and Prejudice. The Prejudice and Appreciation contributed 33.6% and 21.1% to the variance. The Cronbach's alpha was .82 for the total scale (.83 for Prejudice, .81 for Appreciation). Stability was 0.86 for Prejudice and 0.91 for Appreciation.

CONCLUSIONS: The Chinese version of the KAOP can be considered reliable and valid scale for assessing the attitudes toward older people.