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Innov Aging
Innov Aging
innovateage
Innovation in Aging
2399-5300 Oxford University Press US 

10.1093/geroni/igaa057.1038
igaa057.1038
Abstracts
Session 2939 (Poster)
Attitudes About Aging I
AcademicSubjects/SOC02600
Cross-Validation of a Scale to Measure Contact With Older Adults
Intrieri Robert 1 Kurth Maria 2 1 
Western Illinois University, MACOMB, Illinois, United States
2 
Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon, United States
2020 
16 12 2020 
16 12 2020 
4 Suppl 1 Program Abstracts from The GSA 2020 Annual Scientific Meeting “Turning 75: Why Age Matters”324 324
© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Gerontological Society of America.2020This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.Abstract
According to Allport (1954) intergroup contact would reduce prejudice that in-group members would experience toward out-group members. Allport also theorized that positive intergroup contact would follow after four conditions were met: (a) equal group status within the situation, (b) common goals, (c) intergroup cooperation, and (d) the support of authorities, law, or custom. While contact with older adults is a principal influence on attitudes toward older people, there is a paucity of adequate contact measures. This study assessed the cross-validity of the factor structure of an instrument to measure contact with older adults. The convenience sample consisted of 470 participants (61% male) from an undergraduate student subject pool (M = 20.67, SDtotal = 3.37). Participants were predominantly Caucasian (n=176, 48.9%), African American (n=103, 28.6%), and Hispanic/Latino/a (n=51, 14.2%). Results of a confirmatory factor analysis showed the three-factor model exhibited a reasonable fit to the data □□ (41, n = 360) = 191.797; p<.0001, CFI =.971; TLI =.961; RMSEA = .101 (90% CI, 0.087-0.116) SRMS = .042. An additional model examining the relationships between a single indicator of contact frequency and the three-factor COA scale revealed similar fit statistics □□ (41, n = 360) = 191.797; p<.0001, CFI =.967; TLI =.955; RMSEA = .092 (90% CI, 0.079-0.105) SRMS = .044. The findings provide clear and consistent evidence across independent samples that the covariances among the items are best explained through a latent structure that consists of three meaningful factors (“General Contact”, “Positive Experience, and “Negative Experience”).