The attitudes of people in supplementary secondary education towards elderly people

Introduction. Ageing is a normal, long-term and irreversible process. It is a time of profound changes that affect not only the physical, but also the mental, emotional and social aspects of human life.

Aim. The aim of the research was to explore the attitudes of people in supplementary secondary education towards the elderly.

Material and methods. The research was conducted in September 2012 among 100 students of the Group of Schools for Education of Adults in Brzesko. The research was based on the author’s survey and knowledge test questionnaire, a sentence completion test designed by Golde and Kogan, as adapted by Rembowski, the Bogardus social distance scale and the ATE scale by Kogan as adapted to Polish by Rembowski. The research material was then subject to statistical analysis using the Student’s t-test, the chi-squared test and the analysis of variance (ANOVA).

Results. Most of the people in supplementary secondary education have a positive attitude towards elderly people. The knowledge of the responders on ageing of the body and ageing-associated diseases was satisfactory. Most of the responders declared a low level of emotional and social distance towards elderly people.

Conclusions. Further research should be conducted on the social attitudes towards elderly people, as the author’s research showed only a slight predominance of the positive attitude over the negative attitude and the responders’ statements often contained stereotypes on the old age.