Estudo sobre as representações sociais do envelhecimento ativo

: comparação entre idosos e cuidadores formais

Abstract

Considering the increase in life expectancy and the steep ageing of the population, thecurrent investigation, carried out under the framework of the 2nd year of Masters inClinical Psychology and Health, intends to carry out a comparative study the socialrepresentations of active ageing of 45 elderly institutionalized in nursing homes in theBraga District and 45 formal caregivers of them.The following instruments were used: Sociodemographic Questionnaire, theFunctional Geriatric Evaluation of the Elderly questionnaire (OARS) (Fillenbaum &Smyer, 1981), the Attitudes to Ageing Questionnaire, short version (AAQ-12) (Laidlaw,Kishita, Shenkin, & Power, 2018) and the Kogan Attitude toward Old People Scale(AKPI) (Kogan, 1961). The implementation and data collection took place during themonths of February and March and was suspended thereafter because of thecircumstances of the Covid-19 pandemic, having been subsequently resumed in July. Theanalysis of the collected data was developed through the program of statistical dataprocessing IBM SPSS, version 23.These results allowed for the conclusion that there are differences between the socialrepresentations of active ageing in the elderly and their formal caregivers, as well as asignificant relationship between the social representations of formal caregivers and theirtime and experience as healthcare providers. It was also verified that sociodemographicvariables, such as gender and school level qualifications, were not related to socialrepresentations of active ageing. Conversely, a negative association was observedbetween two dimensions of social representations of active ageing and the age of theelderly.

Date of Award	17 Mar 2021
Original language	Portuguese
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Ângela Azevedo (Supervisor)