Does age affect attitudes to health?

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Difference of age attitudes towards health

Module leader: Rosey Stock

Student ID: 21259190

Word count: 2000 words

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Abstract:

This study was conducted to look at a difference between age groups, to find whether younger or older adults have a positive attitude towards health. The participants of this study were 436 (n=436) where 226 were younger and 212 were older. The hypothesis for this study was that there will not be a significant difference between both groups, therefore null hypothesis was accepted and alternative hypothesis was rejected, t (436) -4.17, p <0.05. On the results section it shows that the prediction confirmed the null hypothesis. Older(>25) have shown that they have a positive attitude towards their health with a mean of 142.3, unlike the younger (<25) who showed a negative attitude towards their health with a mean of 135.93. There is an apparent difference to the un-related t-test of the independent variable.

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Introduction:

Attitude can be defined as an evaluative reaction towards something or someone, displayed in a person’s beliefs, feelings, or intender behaviour (Myers, p.36). It responds to something either favourably or unfavourably, according to Daryl Bem “attitudes are likes and dislikes” (1970, p.14). There are different components on attitudes; cognitive, which focus on a person’s belief and ideas about something, behavioural a person who has a tendency to react in certain ways towards something, and affective which are feelings or emotions that something evokes. A sociologist (Fuson, 1942) and a psychologist (Campbell, 1942) defined attitude in the probability that a person will show a detailed behaviour in a specified situation.

The importance of a healthy attitude cannot be underestimated,a healthy knowledge is really important to an individual for effective prevention and to treat an illness. By having knowledge of health it can enable an individual to identify the symptoms of any diseases; it allows the individual to select the appropriate health strategy and to obtain information of available health services (Freimuth, 1990). There has been research’s suggesting that gender, interests, age and personality are important determinants of knowledge inareas other than health (Ackerman, 2000; Bier & Ackerman, 2001). Lifestyle is the kind of habits and customs that a person possesses, can be beneficial to health, but can also reach damaging or negative influence on it so. For example, an

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individual who maintains a balanced diet and performing physical activities on a daily basis are more likely to enjoy good health. Conversely, a person who eats and drinks excessively, a person who does not sleep enough hours and active smokers, are at high risk of suffering preventable diseases (OMS-1946). A positive health attitude can also be associated with consistent beliefs and behaviours. There are several factors that can affect a person’s health, for example a healthy lifestyle. A healthy lifestyle can be defined as voluntary health behaviour based on making choices from the alternatives that are available in individual’s situations (Cockerham et al. 1993). The medical consultations consist on decisions about diets, alcohol intake, drinking, exercise, and other health promoting activities, this is according to prevailing scientific paradigms. Older adults opt for a healthy lifestyle in order to use it, for example, optimum functioning, to live longer, sexual attractiveness, and quality of life (Cockerham 1995). Old adults are more likely to pursue a positive attitude towards their own health than a younger person. There is a wide range of young person’sthat have relatively little control over their own health, on the grounds that this emphasis on their own responsibility forhealth excuses society as a whole from accountability and responsibility for health issues (Waitzkin 1983; Navarro 1986). Despite being able to describe common features for thisset, the young population is a diverse social group whose beliefs, values, attitudes, expectations and behaviours differconsiderably, reflecting the individual knowledge, experience and an infinite range of social influences, they clearly makesa heterogeneous population. This diversity is a challenge for the design of efficient and effective health interventions.(ORTEGA Y PUJOL, 1997).Green et al. (1980) 38 suggest the existence of three types offactors that influence health behaviours: the dispositional factors include a history of behaviour that has great motivational force in making decisions in health behaviour

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(attitudes and beliefs). The facilitating factors are the skills and resources necessary to perform behaviour.

A research done by Bruin et al. (1996) shows a great deal of inconsistency between different health behaviours and attitudes, for example there are people who may smoke cigarettes and exercise, or dislike cigarettes smoke in publicplaces and so on (Mechanic 1979; Stroebe 2000). The aim of this study is to find differences to attitudes towards health,if age affects a person’s attitude towards own health. The alternative hypothesis could be accepted if a t value obtain is significant at least the 5% level or still, the 1% level, therefore the alternative hypothesis is rejected and null hypothesis is accepted because there will not be a significantdifference between both groups.

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Method:

Design:

This study was a quasi-experimental independent group design, where attitudes to health were measure to find the score of age affecting attitudes to health. Where age group, younger < 25 and older > (or equal to) 25 was the independent variable and the total score of the attitudes was the dependent variable.

Participants:

The total number of participants was 436 (n=436), where 226 ofthe participant were younger than 25 and 212 were older than 25. The age range of participant was 18-52. Participants were required to be older than 18 to participate on the questionnaire.

Materials:

The questionnaire used on this study was an attitude health questionnaire. The items are scored as 1 being strongly disagree and 5 strongly agree, although there are some reverseto prevent bias responses where item were are scored strongly disagree =5, while strongly agree =1. Examples of the attitudehealth questionnaire are shown below:

I consider myself a heavy drinker (Reversed item)

Strongly agree Agree Neither Disagree Strongly disagree

I would change my lifestyle to be more healthy

Strongly disagree Disagree Neither Agree Strongly agree

I consider myself to have a well-balanced diet

Strongly disagree Disagree Neither Agree Strongly agree

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The questionnaire can be seen on appendix 1.

Participants could have a min score of 41 and a maximum score of 205 that they could have achieved. Obtaining a high score means that the attitude towards health is positive.

Cronbach’s alpha was used to measure internal reliability based on all possible differences between all the items withinthe scale. So the constituency of the questionnaire which had a Cronbach’s alpha of .79 makes the questionnaire internally reliable, this means that it is measuring what it is supposed to measure so the fact that .79 is acceptable level for internal consistency reliability.

Procedure:

An attitude to health questionnaire was given to participants to complete, along with a participant information sheet; whereit explained why the research is being done and what it involves, the participant information sheet also mentioned what will happened to the data collected (this can be seen on appendix 2), a consent form; where they asked the participant if they would like to take part in (this can be seen on appendix 3) , and a debrief sheet; where the researcher thanked the participant and stated that they could ask them any question about the study (this can be seen on appendix 4).

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Results:

The data was entered into SPSS using unrelated t-test in orderto find the mean and standard deviation. The table below showsthe data collected of total attitudes to health score.

Table 1. Descriptive statistics for younger (<25) and older (>25) of total attitudes to health score.

N Mean StandardDeviation

Younger (<25) 226 135.93 16.15Older(>25)

212 142.3 15.72

The table shows that the highest score was of the older (>25) scoring more than the younger (<25) with a mean of 142.3, which means that the older has a positive attitude towards health, whereas younger have a negative attitude towards health.

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Figure 1: Bar chart graph shows the mean of the total attitudeto health score.

Figure one shows that the older have a highest score (positive) attitude towards health with a mean of 142.3.

There is not a significant difference between the two groups. There is an apparent difference to the un-related t-test of the independent variable.

Sig. (2tailed) = .000

Significance: t (436) -4.17, p < 0.05

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Discussion:

As seen on the results section, we can see that the null hypothesis backed up the predictions that there will not be a significant difference between the two groups. No significant is not the same as no difference, there is a difference between older and younger, with older scoring the highest meanand younger a lower mean. The results shows that older adults tend to care more about their health; it was supported by (Cockerham 1995) theory that older adults opt for a healthy lifestyle in order to use it, for example, optimum functioning, to live longer, sexual attractiveness, and quality of life. And also that old adult are more likely to pursue a positive attitude towards their own health than a younger person. A younger person has a negative attitude towards their health due to lack of information of the difficulties that not taking care of one can be damaging for the health. They are not considering their risk developing anydisease. There is a wide range of young person’s that have relatively little control over their own health, on the grounds that this emphasis on their own responsibility for health.

However it was acknowledged in the literature that there has been research’s suggesting that age is an important determinant of knowledge in areas other than health (Ackerman,2000; Bier & Ackerman, 2001). There are mentions of factors that can affect a person’s health such as their lifestyle which is a really important factor in order to have a positiveattitude towards a person own health.

Although my results may not be enough to reject the alternative hypothesis, they show a trend that later researches may wish to explore more on the topic by refining the experiment.

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There were several limitations to this study; the design of the study was not good enough, the focus of the group design cannot be sure of comprehensively revealing every viewpoint, although the number of participants are substantial for this study. An earlier start on collecting the data would have increased the time needed to survey more participants. The participants had a better understanding of the survey because there were given a participant information sheet where it explained briefly what the study was about. The questionnaire might have biased participants to responses during the task.

For future research in order to improve the study could be that participants are interviewed by the researches. Personal interviews could produce greater information regarding participant’s knowledge and attitudes. This could have added important qualitative date and better insight onto the participants’ opinion and thoughts of the topic.

Having knowledge of all the implications of healthy attitudes towards a person’s health is fundamental; however this study has looked at attitudes and components of attitudes in order to give a brief explanation of what is known as attitude and why it is important. The study provided evidence that older adults are likely to have a positive attitude towards their health unlike younger. People who maintain a balanced diet andengage on physical activities like exercising are more likely to enjoy a positive attitude towards health.

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Appendices:

Appendix 1:

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Appendix 2

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Appendix 3:

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Appendix 4

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References:

Ajzen, I., & Fishbein, M. (2005). The influence of attitudes on behavior. In D. Albarracín, B. T. Johnson, & M. P. Zanna (Eds.), The Handbook of Attitudes. Mahwah, NJ. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Bowling A, (2014). 'Cronbach's alpha'. In: Robert J Edelman, (ed), Research Methods in health. 4th ed. New york: Anne Bowling. pp.(172-173).

ILLICH I. Limits to medicine. Medical nemesis or the expropriation of health. London: Boyars; 1976.

GREEN L, KREUTER MW, DEEDS SG y PARTRIDGE KB. Health education planning. A diagnostic approach. California, Mayfield Publishing Company. 1980.

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology Copyright 2003 bythe American Psychological Association, Inc.

2003, Vol. 84, No. 2, 439–448

Manuscript of a chapter in A. Tesser & N. Schwarz (Eds.) (2001),Intrapersonal Processes (Blackwell Handbook of Social Psychology),Oxford, UK: Blackwell, pp. 436-457.

Tourangeau, R. (1992). Attitudes as memory structures: belief sampling and context effects.

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In N. Schwarz & S. Sudman (Eds.), Context effects in social and psychological research (pp. 35-47). New York: Springer Verlag.

Appendices available at: https://online.uwl.ac.uk/webapps/blackboard/content/listContent.jsp?course_id=_71745_1&content_id=_1456292_1. [Last Accessed15 December 2014].