Unforgotten Edutainment Study

This data was collected for a study that measured participants attitudes towards the elderly and mentally ill prior to and after a musical theatre intervention. Two quantitative instruments were used to assess participants’ stigma towards the elderly: An Aging Semantic Differential (Rosencranz and McNevin 1969) and Kogan’s Attitudes Towards Older People Scale (Kogan 1961). In the Aging Semantic Differential, participants were given a list of 32 bipolar adjective pairs (e.g. independent/dependent, busy/idle) and were asked to rate which adjective was a better description of the elderly using a seven-point scale. A rating of 1 indicated a positive evaluation of the elderly while a rating of 7 indicated a negative evaluation. The semantic differential contains three subscales and each subscale has adequate internal reliability. The subscales are Instrumental–Ineffective (α=0.71), Autonomous–Dependent (α=0.75), and Personal Acceptability–Unacceptability (α=0.84). Items which belonged to the Personal Acceptability–Unacceptability subscale were reverse coded, so that higher scores for each subscale consistently indicated a higher tendency to hold stereotypes. In Kogan’s Attitudes Towards Older People Scale, participants were presented with 10 positive and 10 negative statements about the elderly, and were asked to rate the extent to which they agree with each statement on a scale from 1 ‘Strongly Disagree’ to 6 ‘Strongly Agree’. As the negative items were reverse scored, higher scores indicate more favourable attitudes towards the elderly. This scale had good internal reliability (α=0.79). The original scale comprises 34 items but was shortened for the purposes of this study to prevent participant fatigue. We find a significant improvement in participants’ attitudes towards the elderly after intervention, although this was not sustained at the 3-month follow up.