Attitudes towards older adults (80 years and older): A measurement with the ageing semantic differential - A cross-sectional study of Austrian students.

INTRODUCTION: The aims of the study were to investigate the four-factor structure of the German version of the Aging Semantic Differential (ASD) and to gain initial insights into the attitudes of nursing, medical and humanities students towards older people in Austria. METHOD: A cross-sectional study design with a convenience sample was chosen. RESULTS: The ASD was completed by 255 Austrian nursing, medicine, and humanities students, who described their attitudes towards persons who are 80 years of age and older. The applicability of the four-factor structure (instrumentality, autonomy, acceptability and integrity) of the German version was confirmed by performing a confirmatory factor analysis. The mean age of students in our sample was 23.6 years; 79% of these were female. The sample displayed negative attitudes regarding the factors of autonomy and instrumentality, but more positive attitudes regarding the factors integrity and acceptability. The attitudes of the students in the three study programmes differed, with the medical students displaying the most negative attitudes. Students who displayed positive attitudes had statistically significantly higher levels of knowledge about ageism and better possibilities to hold personal conversations with older people (80+) in the family or circle of friends. CONCLUSION: We conclude that having more knowledge about ageism and close personal contacts to older persons can support positive attitudes towards older individuals.

COVID-19: Technology, Social Connections, Loneliness, and Leisure Activities: An International Study Protocol.

Drawn from the stress process model, the pandemic has imposed substantial stress to individual economic and mental well-being and has brought unprecedented disruptions to social life. In light of social distancing measures, and in particular physical distancing because of lockdown policies, the use of digital technologies has been regarded as the alternative to maintain economic and social activities. This paper aims to describe the design and implementation of an online survey created as an urgent, international response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The online survey described here responds to the need of understanding the effects of the pandemic on social interactions/relations and to provide findings on the extent to which digital technology is being utilized by citizens across different communities and countries around the world. It also aims to analyze the association of use of digital technologies with psychological well-being and levels of loneliness. The data will be based on the ongoing survey (comprised of several existing and validated instruments on digital use, psychological well-being and loneliness), open for 3 months after roll out (ends September) across 11 countries (Austria, France, Germany, India, Malta, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Turkey, and UK). Participants include residents aged 18 years and older in the countries and snowball sampling is employed via social media platforms. We anticipate that the findings of the survey will provide useful and much needed information on the prevalence of use and intensities of digital technologies among different age groups, gender, socioeconomic groups in a comparative perspective. Moreover, we expect that the future analysis of the data collected will show that different types of digital technologies and intensities of use are associated with psychological well-being and loneliness. To conclude, these findings from the study are expected to bring in our understanding the role of digital technologies in affecting individual social and emotional connections during a crisis.

Ending aging in the Shteyngart of Eden: biogerontological discourse in a Super Sad True Love Story.

This article broaches the topic of biogerontology as presented in Gary Shteyngart's dystopic novel Super Sad True Love Story(2010) from the perspective of cultural and literary gerontology and examines how the novel manages to challenge predominant discourses in the field of scientific anti-aging studies, especially the notion that old age is a disease that can be cured. It compares the novel's presentation of biogerontological knowledge to current developments in the field, using Cambridge biogerontologist and immortality prophet Aubrey de Grey's book Ending Aging(2007) as an example. Based on the assumption that cultural criticism can and should impact scientific and medical research on aging, this paper asks whether (the analysis of) fictional texts can be seen as a cultural critical intervention into the ageism so often openly displayed in scientific discourses.