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

10.1093/geroni/igaa057.024
igaa057.024
Abstracts
Session 2804 (Poster)
Building Alliances Across the Generations
AcademicSubjects/SOC02600
Reducing Ageism in a Lifespan Development Course Using Service Learning: Does an Aging Focus Matter?
Graf Allyson  Bolling Callie  
Northern Kentucky University, Highland Heights, Kentucky, 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”8 8
© 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
A rapidly growing older adult population underlies the importance of reducing ageism. Research shows that college students typically hold negative views of older adults. While education and demonstrations within aging-focused courses contribute to reducing ageist beliefs, attitudes, and behavior toward older adults, contact with older adults amplifies these effects. This study investigated whether integrating contact with older adults into a lifespan development course was effective in decreasing college students’ ageism. The sample (N = 104; Mage = 19.94, SD = 3.27) were enrolled in the psychology course, largely as a major requirement for social science majors (51.9%) and health science majors (38.5%). As part of the course curriculum, a portion of the students (n = 57) interacted with older adults to fulfill a service-learning requirement; a control group (n = 47) were not given this option. Knowledge (Facts on Aging), behavior (Relating to Old People Evaluation; aging-related career intentions), and attitudes (Anxiety about Aging and Ambivalent Ageism) were assessed at the beginning and end of the semester. Quantity and quality of contact with older adults was also measured at baseline as a covariate. In a series of ANCOVA analyses, students with aging-related experiences across the term did not differ significantly on any measure compared to those without these experiences, controlling for experience with older adults and baseline assessments. The implications of this finding in the context of research may signal that focus of the course content may be an important moderator of the effectiveness of service-learning experiences with older adults.