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Chapter 2: Literature Review
(1993) found virtually no relationship between nurses’ attitudes and their behaviour
with patients.
Public awareness or representation of ageing issues may also impact upon society’s
level of understanding of older people’s abilities to be autonomous. Mandy, Lucas
and Hodgson (2007) stated that the way older people are perceived publicly needs to
be addressed. Murphy (2004) conducted a documentary analysis of older people and
ageing issues in Irish newspapers and found that less that 10% of news items about
older people addressed ageing issues. Murphy (2004) also found that the national
newspapers give much less coverage of older people than the local weekly
newspapers (on average 3.3 per national edition versus 11.0 per local edition) and
that national newspapers used significantly fewer photographs of older people than
local newspapers. This report revealed that tabloid newspapers tend to use words like
“granny” in sensational headlines while the word “elderly” is still used extensively.
Only one advertisement included a picture of older people. All of this does little to
promote positive attitudes about ageing and older people.
Wade (1999: 342) stated that historically, the images portrayed for caring for older
people have done little to create positive attitudes. Furthermore, nurses themselves
working in this specialty have an “inferiority complex” and feel “isolated,
undervalued and less glamorous” than their colleagues in other specialities. Wade
(1999) concluded that staff need to be empowered, encouraged and educated to meet
the care needs of older people in residential care and this will in turn create a shift in
attitudes. This shift is necessary if there is indeed a link between staff attitudes to
ageing and residents’ experiences of autonomy (Rodgers and Neville, 2007; Randers
and Mattiasson, 2004).
A number of scales to quantify/score healthcare staff’s attitudes towards older people
have been developed (Palmore, 1977; Rosencranz and McNeving, 1969; Kogan,
1961). In 1961 Kogan developed a Likert scale to facilitate the study of attitudes
toward older people with respect to both norms and individual differences. It has
been used many times since it was published and has been translated into many
languages. It has been shown to have good psychometric properties. The scale
contains one set of 17 items expressing negative sentiments about older people and a