Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Nebraska Ranks High For Persons Living Alone, Especially Among The Elderly In Rural Areas, David J. Drozd

Archived Publications

2010 Census efforts to count every person and find the characteristics of every household provide researchers with an abundance of data. One item census data accurately provide are the numbers of households that have one resident, a person living alone. Individuals living alone have become a more common living arrangement over recent decades. Especially for the elderly, living alone can create challenges that policy makers need to evaluate and potentially address.

Organizing The Baby Boomer Construct: An Exploration Of Marketing, Social Systems, And Culture, Jeremy Harris Lipschultz, Michael L. Hilt, Hugh J. Reilly

Communication Faculty Publications

Baby boomer trends are applied in the development of a conceptual framework that offers a social systems and cultural model for future studies. While there has been considerable recent attention paid to baby boomers, the studies lack a coherent theoretical base that would allow for more advanced and continuing research. Aging baby boomers heading into retirement present excellent research opportunities for scholars.

Baby Boomers’ Attitudes Towards Product Placements, Nichole M. Schmoll, John Hafer, Michael L. Hilt, Hugh J. Reilly

Communication Faculty Publications

Including branded products within mass media programming is becoming common. Previous research has focused almost entirely on college-age students' attitudes about placements in movies and television. This research focuses on Baby Boomers and is the first to include questions about multiple media in forming attitudes towards product placements. Six hypotheses were tested. Attitude toward product placement is related to media consumption. Males appear more positive than females. Interactions effects of media consumption x gender and media consumption x age appear insignificant. Analytical results, graphs, tables and managerial implications and representative comments from respondents are presented.

Aarp Online Portrayal Of Social Security: Engaging Aging Baby Boomers Through Interaction, Michael L. Hilt, Jeremy Harris Lipschultz

Communication Faculty Publications

Although baby boomers were not the sole focus of the American Association of Retired Persons' (AARP) website content on the issue of Social Security reform, their interests were addressed in a variety of ways. AARP provided information, position statements, a live chat forum, and message boards. Additionally, AARP had a partnership with the Rock the Vote website. It was unexpected that AARP would be so interested in younger people and in convincing them about their generation's need to support Social Security as it currently exists. It may be that as the baby boom generation enters retirement, AARP will become increasingly …

Elderly American And The Internet: E-Mail, Tv News, And Entertainment Websites, Michael L. Hilt, Jeremy Harris Lipschultz

Communication Faculty Publications

Older Americans, like other groups, vary in their use of the Internet. The participants for this study—elderly computer users from a Midwestern mid-size sample—used e-mail and considered it the most important Internet function. It was common for them to use e-mail with family and friends on a regular, if not daily, basis. When this group of older people did surf the Web, they were more likely to seek information about their special interests rather than visiting mass media sites. They were most likely to use Google.com or Yahoo.com to find sites dealing with weather, health, games, jokes, and entertainment. Additionally, …

Service Learning Is The Great Connector, Jane Angelis

Service Learning, General

It isn't a coincidence that older people are flocking to learn about computers, the Internet, and E-mail. It's a part of the service-learning movement that has caught America's imagination. Why are older people, technology and service learning such natural partners? Ask a middle-school student who is teaching a computer class to older people. "Some senior citizens are afraid of computers in the beginning," he says, "But we know how to make them more comfortable." That confidence is the hallmark of service-learning programs across the country involving elementary, middle school, high school, and college campuses. William Butler Yeats wrote that ':Education …

Invlving Older Adults In Schools, Jane Angelis, Lisa Wathen

Intergenerational

Older adults possess what many young people lack: history, patience, and a deep knowledge of the human struggle. At a time when flexibility and the ability to change are essential skills for entry into the economy, senior citizens can show the way. They were born, after all, before television, jet planes, and communications satellites. And in an age in which mobility, poverty, and other forces have severed family ties, older adults are a living link with the past. With all the benefits that can accrue from involving older people in our schools, it would seem to make sense that' this …

Revising The Kogan Scale: A Test Of Local Television News Producers' Attitudes Toward Older Adults, Michael L. Hilt, Jeremy Harris Lipschultz

Communication Faculty Publications

The Kogan Attitudes Toward Old People Scale (1961) was revised and used to measure local television news producer attitudes toward elderly people. The importance of local television news in the lives of older people makes the study of producers’ attitudes relevant. A national mail survey of producers found that, whereas there were few older news producers, as a group they had positive attitudes toward older people. The study successfully reduced the Kogan scale from 34 to 22 items without altering the overall response pattern.

Senior Outlook On Death And Dying: A Comparative Study Of Older Volunteers Serving Older Clients Versus Older Volunteers Serving Younger Clients, Charles O. Udstuen

Student Work

This thesis examines the attitudes toward death and dying held by volunteers in the Senior Companion Program as compared with those in the Foster Grandparent Program. These programs represent two distinct environments, since volunteers in the former program interact only with other senior citizens while those in the latter program interact with children. In recent years volunteerism has been studied extensively relative to the positive effects that volunteer activities have on those performing them. However, there is a lack of research on the effects of the particular surroundings in which the volunteers operate. The comparison of two groups of volunteers …

Students Help In The Naturalization Of Elders, Nina Gibson

Intergenerational

Many of our elderly citizenship students are struggling to get ready to take the naturalization exam. To help these learners, a collaborative effort between City College and San Francisco State University called Project SHINE began last fall and has doubled in size this semester. Credit students from the Phelan campus and from San Francisco State University are coming out to our campuses to tutor seniors studying in our citizenship classes. The tutors receive credit in an academic class for their work as part of service learning. They have agreed to attend one citizenship class per week under the supervision of …

Intergenerational Service-Learning, Illinois Intergenerational Initiative

Intergenerational

A retired secretary assists with a high-school business class. When she suffers a stroke the students visit, encourage, and help her through rehabilitation --Intergenerational Service-Learning Members of a fraternity help senior citizens relocate to their new facility. The following semester senior citizens mentor freshman students who are overwhelmed by the university experience --Intergenerational Service-Learning.

An older couple visits a preschool to read and tell stories to the children. Three years later when one of them loses sight, the students take turns reading to them--proudly demonstrating their new skills --Intergenerational Service-Learning.

Retirees visit a Youth Center to …

Broadcast News And Elderly People: Attitudes Of Local Television Managers, Michael L. Hilt, Jeremy Harris Lipschultz

Communication Faculty Publications

The Kogan Attitudes Toward Old People Scale was used to measure local television manager attitudes toward elderly people. Census projections have shown that the elderly population will increase dramatically in the next century. The importance of local television news in the lives of the elderly makes the study of two groups of television managers - general managers and news directors 0 found that younger news directors have a more positive attitude toward older people, while the older general managers had a less positive attitude.

Community Service To The Elderly A Service-Learning Model: Guidelines For Replication, James M. Mccrea, Sherry G. Cottom

Curriculum

At the University of Pittsburgh, Generations Together, an Intergenerational Studies Program develops programs that bring young and old together in ways that benefit both generations. The University Challenge for Excellence Program (DCEP) works with entering students who are often first generation, mostly African-American, and who may be in need of special assistance during their first year. UCEP seeks ways to raise their self esteem, give them a sense of purpose, connect them to the University, and ultimately to retain them at Pitt through graduation. In 1994, these two university programs joined together with the Housing Authority of the City of …

Senior Center In Seattle Applauds Service-Learning, Nola L. Freeman

Intergenerational

In the fall of 1992, the Pike Market Senior Center, an urban gathering place for a widely diverse community of low income elders, joined 30 other sites in the Seattle area in accepting an invitation from the Carlson Leadership and Public Service Office at the University of Washington. In accepting this invitation, these sites agreed to help the office accomplish the following mission: "To promote, support, and organize opportunities for undergraduates to become involved in effective public service, helping them to mature in their understanding of complex social, philosophical, economic, and political issues, and instilling in them a life-long commitment …

Social Conditions Of Nebraska's Elderly, F. C. Powell, James A. Thorsen

Publications

In 1991, the authors conducted a study of 500 older Nebraskans, comparing 300 people in Omaha and its surrounding counties with a sample of 200 who lived in the very rural Sandhills counties. The purpose of that study was to compare health and health care experience and satisfaction between urban and rural-dwelling elders. Random samples of older people were identified and interviewed by trained telephone operators; each interview took about a half hour. People were asked about their experiences with health and illness, the distance to their primary source of medical care and the distance to the hospital they use, …

Elder Mentors: Giving Schools A Hand, Marc Freedman, Natalie Jaffe

Intergenerational

Mentoring is threatening to become a buzzword without meaning. We hear about mentoring for principals, for teachers, for students, for employees in a wide range of businesses and industry. There is mentoring by principals, by teachers, by students, by corporate executives, by members of the community. There is mentoring designed to help adult "mentees" (an ungraceful word) be better administrators, teachers, practitioners, or employees; to help youth adjust to society after incarceration or institutionalization; to do better in school, take good care of their children, not get pregnant in the first place, stay out of jail; stop taking drugs-and on …

Evaluation Of An Intergenerational Service-Learning Project For Undergraduates, Robert G. Bringle, John F. Kremer

Intergenerational

An appropriate objective within a liberal arts approach to education is enhancing students' awareness of attitudes toward their own aging. A combined intervention of intergenerational experience and didactic instruction had a favorable effect on students' attitudes toward older adults i11 general and on students' uie'w of their own later lives. Additional positive consequences are discussed, and suggestions for running similar curricular components are presented.

Involving Older Volunteers, In Public Schools, Kristen J. Amundson

Intergenerational

Each day, 5,000 Americans celebrate their sixty-fifth birthday. As this age group becomes larger, it will also become more powerful. As voters, seniors make up the most conscientious of the voting group in our society.

Bringing Old And Young Together, Jane Angelis

Intergenerational

"I just can't get it all done!" It is the classic lament of the teacher stretched too thin by the demands of the classroom. Imagine what educators could accomplish if we only had enough help...

Intergenerational Programs: A Manual For Success, Ramona Frischman

Intergenerational

Although there are always social issues which much be faced by educators and by society, three issues in particular demand attention in the 1990s. Racism, sexism, and a third "ism" - one relatively new to our vocabulary - ageism. Referring to the discrimination against a group or an individual because of age, ageism is most often practiced against members of two distinct groups in our society: those over 60, and those under the ago of 18.

Fostering Intergenerational Relatiollships For At-Risk Youth, Marc Freedman

Intergenerational

Many at-risk youth are growing up isolated from the range of caring and consistent adult relationships so important for navigating the treacherous course from adolescence to adulthood. An accumulation of research from the social sciences suggests that adult relationships-provided not only by parents. but by grandparents, neighbors and other interested elders-are a common factor among resilient children, who achieve success despite growing up under disadvantaged and stressful circumstances. An important. and not often addressed, question for social programs and policy is whether the circumstances of more at-risk youth could be improved through efforts designed to provide greater access to helping …

Correlates Of Life Satisfaction In An Aged Population, Janice Sue Sitzman

Student Work

This study investigated life satisfaction correlates of elderly persons living in two residential centers. Based on the theoretical and empirical literature, it was hypothesized that all elderly subjects tested would report high levels of life satisfaction. In addition, it was hypothesized that factors such as health perception, developmental task resolution, locus of control, and satisfaction with one's social network would be related to life satisfaction.

Subjects were recruited from two residential centers for the elderly. The measures were administered to 42 subjects. There were 34 female subjects and 8 male subjects. The elderly subjects were interviewed individually at their place …

Intergenerational Service Programs: Meeting Shared Needs Of Young And Old, Debra L. Cherry, Frank R. Benest, Barbara Gates, Joanne White

Special Topics, General

This society's adolescent and elderly populations share many needs and characteristics. Both often have little access to meaningful social roles. For example, neither is likely to be fully integrated into the work force and, consequently, both groups tend to have high rates of unemployment (Pearl, 1978; Sheppard, 1976). Moreover, their family roles tend to be in transition. Teenagers are ·in the process of gaining independence from their parents while many older adults face changes such as the loss of a spouse or decreased family power relative to their middle-aged children. The lack of meaningful social roles has been blamed for …

Intergenerational Service-Learning: Contributions To Curricula, James P. Firman, Donald E. Gelfand, Catherine Ventura

Intergenerational

This article reports some findings from a national demonstration project involving the National Council on the Aging (NCOA) and thirteen colleges and universities. We studied 39 courses in which students were involved in service-learning in aging. We describe and discuss (1) the range of demonstrably feasible 'adoptions, (2) what faculty say their students learned from the experiences, and (3) faculty perceptions of personal benefits and costs associated with developing and directing these projects.

Students As Resources To The Aging Network, James P. Firman, Donlad E. Gelfand, Catherine Ventura

Intergenerational

In times of shrinking resources and growing needs, the aging network must increase its efforts to involve the voluntary sector in services and programs for the aged. A relatively untapped source of manpower is our nation's 12,300,000 students in 3,200 colleges and universities. This article, based on the findings of a national demonstration project, examines feasible outcomes and practical limitations of service-learning as an approach for increasing the involvement of students in providing services to older persons.

Survey Of Maintenance And Management Needs In Omaha Housing Authority's Apartments For Senior Citizens, Rebecca S. Fahrlander, Joan V. Holley

Publications

The purpose of this study was to obtain input from residents of Omaha Housing Authority apartments for senior citizens regarding maintenance and management needs.

Developing And Implementing Service-Learning In Aging, Donald E. Gelfand, James P. Firman

Intergenerational

This article focuses on the potential benefits of service-learning in aging to students, the university, and the community. We first discuss the concept of service-learning, clarify its parameters, and describe the types of projects that best exemplify its unique blend of service and learning. Opportunities for service-learning are examined using examples from the current Intergenerational Service-Learning Project of the National Council on Aging. The complexity of' initiating and gaining acceptance of service-learning in aging projects is explored, with particular attention given to supervisory and curriculum issues. Finally, the national implications of' service-learning in aging are discussed, as well as the …

Human Services Useage By Older Hispanics In Nebraska, David R. Dimartino, Carole Davis

Publications

The original report on which this article is based resulted from research conducted by CAUR for the Nebraska Mexican American Commission with funding from the Nebraska Commission on Aging. Dr. DiMartino and Carole M. Davis were co-investigators for the project and co-authored the lengthier report. The cooperation and assistance provided by so many members of the Hispanic communities in Lincoln, Omaha, and Scottsbluff made the study possible.

Intergenerational School Projects: Examples And Guidelines, James P. Firman, Anita M. Stowell

Intergenerational

The residential, educational, and recreational patterns of modern American society tend to isolate the young from the old. Because there is little interaction between the age groups, each generation tends to stereotype the other. Educators must realize that these age-related stereotypes affect our interpersonal relationships, our self-images, and, consequently, our potential to live a full, rewarding life.

Older Hispanics In Nebraska: Their Characteristics, Attitudes, And Needs, David R. Dimartino, Carole Davis

Publications

The successful delivery of human services requires rational program planning. Rational program planning, in turn, requires evaluation of 1) the needs of targeted client groups, 2) the availability of established services to the potential clients, and 3) the utilization of available services by the client population(s). The success of human service delivery systems, therefore, must incorporate the assessment of public programs in terms of the correspondence between client needs and service provision and usage.