RESEARCH ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF AN INTERGENERATIONAL PROGRAM AND ASSESSING ITS EFFECT ON CHILDREN'S ATTITUDE TOWARD THE ELDERLY

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The purpose of this study was to develop an intergenerational program in changing children's attitudes toward the elderly, and to assess its effectiveness. First, two instruments for assessing children's attitudes toward older persons were developed. One instrument consists of 25 statements about old people for measuring perceptions of the aged, the other one is a Semantic Differential method for assessing affection for elderly people, which makes use of 18 paired adjectives (such as good-bad, happy-sad). Our instruments were used to assess elementary, secondary and high school students' attitudes toward old people. As the results of analyzes on these data, a 22-item perception measurement tool with a choice of 'Yes' 'No' response and a SD test consisting of 17 pairs of adjectives by which students rate old people on a five-point scale were established.Secondarily, a survey was conducted in order to collect examples of intergenerational programs at kindergartens, elementary schools and secondary schools in Tokyo. 51.8% of the kindergartens (n=218) have had intergenerational programs, and 50.3% of both elementary schools (n=294) and secondary schools (n=189) have carried out any programs on social welfare. However, most of the programs were inviting elderly persons to school events such as sports day.We tried to make an intergenerational program in challenging stereotyopes of the aged. A program of a 1-day, 2-hr intergeneration workshop and watching the 3 videos concerning older persons' lives were administered to 5 children between 7 and 9 years of age. The program was effective in improving the acceptability of older adults, but did not affect the scores of children's perception and affection assessed by out instruments.