Rural home health care workers' attitudes toward the elderly: a replication study

We collected data from 548 rural home health care workers in Southern Illinois in 1990 to replicate a study conducted in 1988 designed to identify and assess the attitudes of those workers toward the elderly and their elderly clients. Subjects were asked to respond to a fifteen item, self-report questionnaire. Reliability of the scale was estimated at .79, using Cronbach's alpha. Readability was estimated at the sixth-grade reading level as measured by the SMOG Readability Formula. Chi-square statistics were used to determine whether there were any differences between the 1988 and 1990 data sets, with a significance level of .003, using the Bonferroni correction procedures. Results were similar for both the 1988 and 1990 data sets. For example, whereas 31.8% of the 1988 respondents agreed with the statement: "most of my clients are pretty much the same," 30.5% of the 1990 respondents agreed. The findings from this study indicate that attitudes toward the elderly among this population of home health care workers have remained relatively consistent over this two year period.