MedEdPORTAL (Jan 2016)
Critical Synthesis Package: Kogan's Attitudes Toward Old People Scale (Kogan OP Scale)
Abstract
Abstract This Critical Synthesis Package contains: (1) a Critical Analysis of the psychometric properties and the application of health science education of the Kogan's Attitudes Toward Old People Scale (Kogan OP Scale), and (2) a copy of the Kogan OP Scale and its scoring instructions developed by Nathan Kogan, PhD. The Kogan OP Scale is a 34-item self-report scale designed to measures attitudes toward older adults. Seventeen of the items are negatively worded and 17 are positively worded which make up the Older Person Positive and Older Person Negative subscales. The response options are given using a 6-point summed Likert-type scale (1 = strongly disagree, 6 = strongly agree), with a score of 4 given in the event a respondent failed to answer a question. Higher scores indicate greater negative attitudes toward older adults. The Kogan OP Scale has been used to examine attitudes about older adults across different groups (i.e., college students, older adults, medical students, nursing students, and other health care professionals). The construction of the scale was based on a male-dominated sample and has been used for 45 years without formal revision. As older adults have changed over the last 40 years with regards to life expectancy, health status, family makeup, living conditions, and use of technology, revision of the scale is necessary. Further, recent studies have demonstrated that the OP subscales show weak internal consistency and share only a small proportion of the variance. In addition, corrected item-to-total correlations demonstrate that the items are weakly tied to the latent variable, and moreover, content analysis of the items has shown that some items are outdated (as previously stated). Future studies should address the inclusion of a more diverse sample in validation of the scale for the US population, as well as the examination of additional forms of validity such as predictive validity and concurrent validity within the English speaking population.
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