Attitudes towards the old and death, and spiritual well-being

The purpose of this research was to determine the interrelationship of attitudes towards older people, death attitudes, and the spiritual well-being of 300 nursing students. Instruments employed were Kogan's Old People Scale, the Death Anxiety Scale, the Death Depression Scale, and the Spiritual Well-being Scale. Pearson product-moment correlation coefficients and multiple-regression analysis were used to test the hypotheses. Hypotheses were supported predicting an inverse relationship between attitudes towards older people and death anxiety and death depression (p<.01), and a positive relationship between spiritual well-being and negative attitude towards older people (p<.01). Data did not support the hypothesis that death attitudes and spiritual well-being would account for greater variance in attitudes towards older people than either single variable alone. From a step-wise multiple-regression analysis, race/ethnicity and death attitudes together accounted for 21% of the variance in attitudes towards older people. Study results demonstrated that Caucasian nursing students hold positive attitudes toward older people. Implications for health care are discussed with particular emphasis on potential strategies for education.