Attitudes Toward Old Persons scale (OP)

Abstract

The Attitudes Toward Old Persons scale (OP), widely designated in psychometric literature as Kogan’s Attitudes Toward Old People Scale (Kogan OP Scale), is an enduring instrument designed to quantify cognitive and affective orientations toward older adults. Developed by the psychologist Nathan Kogan in 1961, the instrument emerged during a formative era in social gerontology when researchers sought to conceptualize and measure generalized societal prejudice, stereotyping, and age-based discrimination. Composed of 34 items arranged into 17 matched positive (OP+) and negative (OP-) item pairs, the scale systematically evaluates attitudes across diverse behavioral and psychosocial domains, including residential preferences, intergenerational communication, cognitive rigidity, socio-political influence, emotional dependency, and personal aesthetics.

Respondents evaluate each item using a 6-point Likert response format ranging from Strongly agree to Strongly disagree. Across more than six decades of empirical inquiry, the Kogan OP Scale has demonstrated robust psychometric characteristics, with internal consistency coefficients (Cronbach’s alpha) typically spanning from 0.66 to 0.85 for subscales and exceeding 0.80 for the composite scale across diverse educational, medical, and cross-cultural cohorts. Factor analytic investigations have sparked sustained theoretical dialogue concerning whether the instrument reflects a single bipolar continuum of general age-related attitude, a bifurcated two-factor framework parsing positive attitudes from negative stereotypes, or a multidimensional structure tapping specific sociocognitive dimensions. The scale remains an international benchmark in healthcare curricula, gerontological nursing, medical education, and developmental psychology for assessing baseline ageism and evaluating the pedagogical efficacy of educational interventions targeting bias reduction.

Keywords

Kogan OP Scale, Attitudes Toward Old Persons scale, ageism assessment, gerontological psychometrics, matched-pair design, elderly stereotypes, intergenerational attitudes, healthcare student attitudes, positive-negative subscales, Nathan Kogan

Authors

The scale was conceptualized, constructed, and psychometrically validated by Nathan Kogan, Ph.D. (1926–2013), an American psychologist renowned for his foundational research in social psychology, cognitive styles, personality development, creativity, and lifespan psychology.

• Primary Investigator: Nathan Kogan, Ph.D.
• Institutional Affiliation during Scale Development: Educational Testing Service (ETS), Princeton, New Jersey, United States, in conjunction with Harvard University’s Department of Social Relations.
• Subsequent Career Affiliation: Professor of Psychology and Chair of the Psychology Department at the New School for Social Research (now The New School) in New York City, where he mentored generations of psychometric and developmental researchers.
• Historical Context & Collaborative Contributions: Kogan collaborated extensively with prominent social scientists, including Michael A. Wallach (collaborator on risk-taking and cognitive creativity) and Florence C. Shelton. His work on attitudes toward older persons originated from empirical efforts to examine whether prejudice toward demographic out-groups (such as ethnic minorities or physically disabled individuals) shared cognitive underpinnings with negative stereotyping of the aged population.

Purpose

The primary purpose of the Attitudes Toward Old Persons scale is to provide a standardized, quantitative assessment of explicit attitudes, evaluative dispositions, and stereotypic beliefs held by individuals toward older adults. Nathan Kogan formulated the instrument to fulfill both theoretical and applied psychometric imperatives within social psychology and gerontology:

1. Assessing Generalized Dispositions and Ageist Bias

During the mid-twentieth century, empirical psychology lacked psychometrically rigorous instruments to evaluate prejudice directed against older individuals. Existing scales often confounded factual gerontological knowledge with evaluative attitudes or failed to account for acquiescence response bias. Kogan engineered the OP Scale to isolate evaluative affect and stereotypic expectations, enabling researchers to map how personal age, gender, socio-economic status, and educational exposure influence perceptions of aging.

2. Evaluating Medical and Healthcare Educational Interventions

In applied and clinical environments, the instrument is frequently employed across undergraduate nursing programs, medical schools, occupational therapy curricula, and allied health educational programs. Healthcare providers regularly harbor unconscious or explicit stereotypes regarding the prognosis, cognitive malleability, and social value of geriatric patients. The Kogan OP Scale serves as an indispensable pre-test and post-test measurement tool to assess whether didactic courses in geriatrics, structured clinical rotations in long-term care facilities, or intergenerational service-learning projects successfully reduce ageism and cultivate therapeutic empathy among trainees.

3. Cross-Disciplinary and Theoretical Research

The scale permits researchers to explore how attitudes toward aging correlate with broader personality constructs, such as authoritarianism, intolerance of ambiguity, ethnocentrism, and death anxiety. Furthermore, it supports cross-national comparative research aimed at determining whether filial piety traditions or cultural modernization buffer against or exacerbate negative societal perspectives regarding older generations.

Psychological Construct

The construct measured by the Attitudes Toward Old Persons scale is the multidimensional evaluative orientation toward older adults as a distinct social group. Rather than treating attitudes toward older people as an undifferentiated, unipolar phenomenon, Kogan recognized that aging elicits complex, ambivalent, and frequently contradictory cognitive appraisals and affective reactions.

The construct encompasses both cognitive stereotypes (assumptions about the abilities, habits, and traits of older adults) and affective reactions (feelings of comfort, distress, irritation, or admiration experienced in the presence of older persons). Structurally, Kogan captured this duality through 17 thematic domains, each evaluated by a positive statement and a complementary negative statement:

1. Residential Segregation vs. Intergenerational Integration

This domain examines the respondent’s beliefs regarding the physical and communal placement of older people in society. Negative attitudes reflect preferences for residential isolation and age segregation (e.g., that older adults should live exclusively among peers to preserve neighborhood vibrancy), whereas positive attitudes advocate for intergenerational residential integration and highlight the enriching presence of older residents within communities.

2. Cognitive Flexibility vs. Intellectual Rigidity

This facet assesses beliefs regarding the capacity of older adults to adapt to changing environmental demands. The negative dimension endorses stereotypes of cognitive calcification, stubbornness, and an inability to acquire new habits or perspectives. The positive counterpart affirms neurocognitive adaptability, resilience, and the capacity of older individuals to adjust constructively when circumstances dictate.

3. Intergenerational Friction and Discourse

Evaluates expectations regarding communication patterns across cohorts. Negative items tap stereotypes of older adults as chronic complainers who disparage youth culture or inflict social boredom by dwelling obsessively on historical reminiscences (“the good old days”). Positive items depict older people as conversational, engaging narrators whose personal histories offer cultural and psychological enrichment.

4. Personal Appearance, Cleanliness, and Domestic Maintenance

This component taps aesthetic and behavioral evaluations. Negative stereotypes assume physical untidiness, personal neglect, and the deterioration of living environments into shabby states. Positive items conceptualize older adults as conscientious, maintaining attractive homes and projecting neat, clean personal grooming.

5. Socio-Political and Economic Power

Measures attitudes concerning the societal influence wielded by older cohorts. The negative valence reflects resentment toward older adults occupying disproportionate authority within commerce and political office, while the positive items contextualize civic engagement and economic autonomy as indicators of healthy self-reliance rather than obstructive dominance.

6. Emotional Equilibrium and Affective Quality

This dimension encompasses affective reactions elicited during direct contact. Negative conceptualizations view older people as irritable, cantankerous, demanding excessive emotional validation, and generating interpersonal discomfort. Positive orientations identify older individuals as cheerful, tranquil, emotionally soothing, and respectful of social boundaries.

7. Wisdom and Human Value

Assesses the cultural construct of developmental maturation. Positive items frame aging as synonymous with wisdom, perspective, and balanced judgment, whereas negative items devalue experiential accumulation as an illusion, portraying older individuals as no wiser than younger counterparts or inherently deficient in constructive guidance.

Theoretical Framework

The Attitudes Toward Old Persons scale is grounded in classic twentieth-century psychological paradigms of prejudice formation, cognitive balance, and psychodynamic projection. Several foundational theoretical traditions inform the scale’s structural logic and operationalization:

The Authoritarian Personality and Generalized Out-Group Rejection

Kogan formulated the scale in direct dialogue with the theoretical architecture of The Authoritarian Personality formulated by Theodor W. Adorno, Else Frenkel-Brunswik, Daniel Levinson, and Nevitt Sanford (1950). Adorno and colleagues postulated that prejudice is rarely restricted to a single target group; instead, individuals possessing rigid, conventional cognitive styles exhibit a generalized predisposition to reject social out-groups, enforce conformity, and display hostility toward those perceived as physically vulnerable or socially divergent. Kogan hypothesized that ageism operates as an extension of this ethnocentric and authoritarian syndrome. In his empirical trials, Kogan incorporated the California F-Scale (measuring authoritarianism) to confirm that individuals harboring prejudiced views toward ethnic or racial minorities routinely endorsed negative stereotypes toward older people.

Allport’s Nature of Prejudice and Stereotypic Categorization

The scale draws conceptually upon Gordon Allport’s seminal treatise The Nature of Prejudice (1954). Allport articulated that human cognition relies on category formation, which inevitably simplifies complex social realities into stereotypic generalizations. Kogan’s matched-pair structure addresses Allport’s assertion that prejudice involves over-generalization and resistance to evidence. By matching stereotypic assertions (e.g., “all old people are pretty much alike”) against statements recognizing human diversity, Kogan’s scale measures the extent to which a respondent’s social categorization processes rely on categorical homogenizing versus individualized perception.

Terror Management Theory and Existential Vulnerability

Although formulated subsequent to Kogan’s initial 1961 publication, contemporary researchers embed the Kogan OP Scale within Terror Management Theory (TMT) (Greenberg, Pyszczynski, & Solomon, 1986). TMT posits that human beings experience profound existential anxiety when confronted with reminders of their own inevitable physical decay and mortality. Older persons function as inescapable, living symbols of human vulnerability, biological decline, and death. Negative items on the Kogan scale (focusing on physical deterioration, dependency, and untidiness) reflect defensive psychological distancing mechanisms whereby younger cohorts denigrate older adults to insulate themselves from existential dread.

The Contact Hypothesis

Kogan’s framework also aligns with social contact paradigms. Gordon Allport proposed that interpersonal contact under optimal conditions (equal status, shared goals, institutional support) mitigates out-group hostility. The OP Scale was designed to track changes in evaluative valence resulting from structured intergenerational contact, demonstrating how qualitative engagement transforms stereotypical cognitive schema into nuanced interpersonal appraisals.

Validity

Empirical validation of the Kogan OP Scale spans over six decades, demonstrating significant construct, convergent, discriminant, and predictive validity across diverse populations.

Construct and Convergent Validity

In Kogan’s initial validation studies (1961) involving undergraduate cohorts (N = 208) and community samples, scores on the negative subscale (OP-) demonstrated statistically significant positive correlations with the California F-Scale (r = .40 to .53, p < .001) and the California Ethnocentrism (E) Scale (r = .35 to .48, p < .001). These findings substantiated Kogan’s hypothesis that negative attitudes toward older adults represent part of a broader ideological constellation characterized by conventionalism, rigidity, and out-group prejudice.

Convergent validity has further been established by correlating the Kogan OP Scale with contemporary instruments. Significant correlations have been documented between the Kogan scale and:

• The Fraboni Scale of Ageism (FSA): Moderate-to-strong inverse correlations between FSA scores and overall Kogan OP scores (r = -.52 to -.68), confirming that higher general acceptance on Kogan’s measure corresponds to lower levels of explicit ageist ideology.
• Palmore’s Facts on Aging Quizzes (FAQ 1 & FAQ 2): Modest but consistent positive correlations (r = .25 to .42), indicating that higher factual gerontological knowledge moderately associates with more favorable emotional and behavioral attitudes.
• Aging Semantic Differential (ASD): Robust correlations (r = .55 to .71) with the Evaluative and Instrumentality dimensions of Rosencranz and McNevin’s semantic differential scales.

Discriminant Validity

The scale discriminates effectively between evaluative attitudes toward aging and unrelated psychological traits. Investigations assessing general intelligence, mechanical aptitude, and academic performance have observed non-significant correlations with Kogan OP scores (r values typically ranging between -.06 and .08), demonstrating that the instrument does not inadvertently reflect cognitive ability or intellectual competence. Additionally, the scale exhibits discriminant validity from general social desirability measures, provided instructions emphasize anonymity and voluntary self-reflection.

Predictive and Known-Groups Validity

The Kogan OP Scale has demonstrated exceptional known-groups validity in healthcare settings. Longitudinal and cross-sectional studies across nursing and medical trainees consistently reveal that:

• Students expressing an explicit career intention to specialize in geriatrics, palliative care, or chronic disease management score significantly higher on the positive scale (OP+) and overall composite score compared to peers pursuing acute specialties such as surgery, emergency medicine, or neonatology (p < .01).
• In pre-test/post-test experimental designs, educational interventions featuring structured, positive intergenerational clinical encounters reliably yield statistically significant increases in total Kogan OP scores (effect sizes ranging from Cohen’s d = 0.35 to 0.72), confirming the instrument’s sensitivity to pedagogical change.

Reliability

The reliability of the Attitudes Toward Old Persons scale has been scrutinized extensively across numerous samples, translations, and demographic cohorts.

Internal Consistency

In his foundational psychometric evaluations, Kogan (1961) utilized the Spearman-Brown prophecy formula applied to split-half correlations, yielding reliability coefficients ranging from .66 to .83 for the positive (OP+) and negative (OP-) subscales across three distinct collegiate samples, with total scale composite reliabilities reaching .73 to .85. Subsequent contemporary studies utilizing Cronbach’s alpha have confirmed these parameters:

• Negative Subscale (OP-): Alpha coefficients typically range between .70 and .84 across both Western and non-Western clinical cohorts.
• Positive Subscale (OP+): Alpha coefficients demonstrate slightly more variability, historically registering between .66 and .81, a phenomenon attributed to the societal ceiling effect wherein normative politeness encourages endorsement of generic positive platitudes.
• Total Composite Scale: When negative items are reverse-coded and aggregated with positive items, global Cronbach’s alpha coefficients routinely fall between .78 and .89, demonstrating substantial internal consistency suitable for group-level inferential research and educational program benchmarking.

Test-Retest Stability

Temporal stability assessments have demonstrated adequate test-retest reliability across diverse intervals. Studies re-administering the instrument across 4- to 8-week intervals in educational settings without intervening gerontological curricula have reported Pearson correlation coefficients (r) between .72 and .84, demonstrating that the underlying construct represents an enduring attitudinal disposition rather than a transient, fluctuating state.

Factor Analysis

The structural dimensionality of the Kogan OP Scale has been the subject of ongoing psychometric investigation and debate, centered on whether the scale reflects a single bipolar dimension, an orthogonal two-factor structure, or a complex multidimensional framework.

Unidimensional vs. Two-Factor Models

Nathan Kogan initially structured the instrument on the theoretical assumption that attitudes toward older people represent a single bipolar continuum. Under this conceptualization, reversing the valence of the negative items allows researchers to sum all 34 items into a single global score representing favorable versus unfavorable orientation toward the elderly.

However, subsequent exploratory factor analyses (EFA) conducted by researchers such as Campbell (1971), Silver (1982), and Matute-Blanco et al. (2018) consistently identified a distinct two-factor pattern corresponding directly to item phrasing directionality:

• Factor 1: Positive Attitudes (OP+) — Comprising the 17 positively worded items reflecting appreciation, accommodation, wisdom, and social inclusion.
• Factor 2: Negative Stereotypes (OP-) — Comprising the 17 negatively phrased items measuring intolerance, perceived burden, physical aversion, and segregationist impulses.

Statistical analyses frequently reveal that the correlation between the OP+ and OP- subscales is only moderate (r = -.30 to -.55), suggesting that positive appreciation and negative prejudice are not merely reciprocal opposites on a strict continuum, but represent quasi-independent attitudinal dimensions. An individual can simultaneously hold high respect for older adults’ wisdom while harboring anxiety regarding their perceived physical dependence or political influence.

Multidimensional Structural Models

Several confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) on large international samples (e.g., in Sweden, Turkey, Japan, and Spain) have tested more granular multi-factor configurations. These models isolate substantive behavioral facets such as:

• Personal Appearance and Cleanliness (items 3, 16, 24, 28)
• Cognitive and Behavioral Rigidity (items 2, 18, 27)
• Intergenerational Coexistence and Residential Space (items 1, 15, 23, 26)
• Affective Disposition and Sociability (items 8, 13, 21, 33)
• Societal Value and Wisdom (items 12, 20)

In standard goodness-of-fit assessments, while multi-factor models yield acceptable comparative fit indices (CFI > .90; RMSEA < .06), the two-factor framework (OP+ and OP-) remains the most widely adopted psychometric architecture due to its balance of parsimony, theoretical coherence, and measurement stability across cultures.

Instrument / Measurement Tool

The operational characteristics and structural architecture of Kogan’s Attitudes Toward Old People Scale are delineated below:

• Instrument Name: Attitudes Toward Old Persons scale (OP) / Kogan’s Attitudes Toward Old People Scale (Kogan OP Scale)
• Original Author: Nathan Kogan, Ph.D.
• Publication Year: 1961
• Instrument Classification: Self-report psychometric rating scale; explicit attitudinal assessment inventory.
• Target Population: Adolescents, college undergraduates, healthcare practitioners, nursing students, medical trainees, and general adult populations.
• Administration Time: Approximately 10 to 15 minutes.
• Total Item Count: 34 items arranged into 17 matched content pairs (17 positive items, 17 negative items).
• Authentic Response Scale: 6-point Likert-type forced-choice scale without an ambiguous neutral anchor:
  • Strongly agree
  • Agree
  • Agree slightly
  • Disagree slightly
  • Disagree
  • Strongly disagree
• Scoring Protocols:
  • Subscale Scoring (Two-Factor Approach): Responses can be scored from 1 (Strongly disagree) to 6 (Strongly agree) independently for the 17 OP+ items (subscale score range: 17 to 102) and the 17 OP- items (subscale score range: 17 to 102). Higher scores on OP+ indicate stronger positive attitudes; higher scores on OP- indicate stronger negative prejudice.
  • Composite Scoring (Unidimensional Approach): When computing a single composite score, all 17 negative items (OP-) are reverse-coded (e.g., Strongly agree = 1, Agree = 2, Agree slightly = 3, Disagree slightly = 4, Disagree = 5, Strongly disagree = 6), while positive items (OP+) retain their forward scoring (Strongly agree = 6, Strongly disagree = 1). Summing across all 34 items produces an overall score ranging from 34 to 204, where higher scores signify more favorable, non-ageist attitudes toward older individuals.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Attitudes Toward Old Persons scale was initially published in 1961 in the Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, a journal published by the American Psychological Association (APA). Under standard historical psychometric research conventions, the instrument exists within the scholarly public domain for non-commercial educational, clinical, and academic research purposes.

Researchers, medical educators, and graduate students can freely reproduce and administer the scale within academic contexts without payment of licensing royalties, provided standard academic attribution is accorded to Nathan Kogan. The instrument has also been disseminated through curated open-access educational repositories, notably via the Association of American Medical Colleges’ (AAMC) MedEdPORTAL Publications (2016), confirming its status as an accessible educational resource for evaluating healthcare training curricula.

References

Adorno, T. W., Frenkel-Brunswik, E., Levinson, D. J., & Sanford, R. N. (1950). The Authoritarian Personality. Harper & Row.

Allport, G. W. (1954). The Nature of Prejudice. Addison-Wesley.

Campbell, M. E. (1971). Study of the attitudes of nursing students toward the elderly. Nursing Research, 20(2), 147–151. https://doi.org/10.1097/00006199-197103000-00009

Cash, L. C. (1983). Factors influencing children’s attitudes toward older persons [Doctoral dissertation, Texas Tech University]. Texas Tech University Libraries Institutional Repository. https://repositories.tdl.org/ttu-ir/bitstream/handle/2346/12429/31295003446985.pdf?sequence=1

Kogan, N. (1961). Attitudes toward old people: The development of a scale and an examination of correlates. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 62(1), 44–54. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0048053

Kogan, N. (1961). Attitudes toward old people in an older sample. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 62(3), 616–622. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0042459

Kogan, N., Stephens, J. W., & Shelton, F. C. (1961). Age differences: A developmental study of discriminability and affective response. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 62(2), 221–230. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0047325

Matute-Blanco, M. A., Vica-Pérez, B., & Martínez-García, C. (2018). Psychometric properties of Kogan’s Attitudes Toward Old People scale among Spanish nursing students. Nurse Education Today, 68, 142–147. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nedt.2018.06.008

MedEdPORTAL. (2016). Kogan’s Attitudes Toward Old People Scale (Kogan OP Scale). MedEdPORTAL Publications, 12, 10325. https://doi.org/10.15766/mep_2374-8265.10325

Silver, H. N. (1982). Factor structure of the Kogan Attitudes Toward Old People Scale. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 42(3), 903–908. https://doi.org/10.1177/001316448204200325

Items of the Scale