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A study of factors relating to the attitude of theological students toward the elderly

University of British Columbia

The purpose of this study was to investigate the interaction of selected independent variables with the general concept of attitude toward the elderly by students attending Northwest Baptist Theological College and the Vancouver School of Theology. In order to investigate these interactions, attitudes of subjects toward the elderly were measured and the results tested against the independent variables of sex, age, years of post-secondary education, years of theological education, purpose for taking theological education, and the nature and the frequency of contact with the elderly. A three part questionnaire was used to gather data: a religious conservatism measure developed by the Hartford Seminary Foundations an attitude measure developed by Rosencranz and McNevin (196-9) that measured attitude, but subdivided into the Instrumental-Ineffective, the Autonomous-Dependent, and the Personal Acceptability-Unacceptability dimensions of attitude toward the elderly1 a section that elicited demographic data. Data gathered was analysed by Pearson Product Moment correlation, t-tests for critical ratios, and multiple regression analysis. Reported results indicated that students tested at both schools held significantly positive attitudes toward the elderly when measured against a theoretically neutral score. On the three sub-dimensions of the attitude scale, subjects at both schools registered positive responses, with the exception of subjects at Northwest Baptist Theological College, who reported a significantly negative score on the Instrumental-Ineffective dimension. Analysis of data gathered failed to establish any statistically significant relationship at the .05 level of confidence between attitude toward the elderly and sex, age, years of post-secondary education, years of theological education, purpose for undertaking theological education, and the frequency or the nature of contact with the elderly. Subjects at Northwest Baptist Theological College registered a significant correlation between religious conservatism and attitude toward the elderly, but subjects at the Vancouver School of Theology failed to report a significant relationship on this variable. Finally, those subjects who had one or more regular contacts with the elderly tended to be more positive than those subjects who had no regular contact with the elderly, although not significantly so at the .05 level of confidence.

Text

2010-03-29

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http://hdl.handle.net/2429/22885

Administrative, Adult and Higher Education

University of British Columbia

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