Development and Initial Validation of the Adolescents' Ageism Toward Older Adults Scale

Background and objectives: Ageism toward older adults, prevalent in contemporary societies, seems to be internalized during childhood and consolidated during adolescence. Although several instruments have been developed to measure adolescents' ageism, they present a number of limitations. The study aimed at developing a new instrument, the Adolescents' Ageism Toward Older Adults Scale, and testing its psychometric properties. Research design and methods: A 3-phase process was followed: the instrument's items were developed empirically from focus groups of adolescents; its content validity was evaluated; and finally, its psychometric properties were tested through a multicenter cross-sectional study involving 575 adolescents. Results: Exploratory factor analysis of the new scale retained 33 items grouped into six factors: Moodiness, Traditionalism, Physical deterioration, Anti-technologism, Sageness and Sociability. Confirmatory factor analysis evidenced a second-order factor structure. Omega coefficients measuring internal consistency were above the cut-off of 0.60 for the six factors except for Anti-technologism. Intraclass correlation coefficients for the entire scale and for the six factors were greater than 0.70, again excepting Anti-technologism. Discussion and implications: The Adolescents' Ageism Toward Older Adults Scale is a promising measure of adolescents' negative and positive attitudes toward older adults. Its validation highlighted some criticalities that can be resolved by a few modifications. Further testing of the scale should be conducted after these modifications.