People Attitude toward Elderly in Golestan Province, 2009

Socio-economical and scientific development has brought about rapid increase of elders and changed old traditions. Quality of life of elders with good wife’s, children's and friend’s support is higher than that of others. Hence, we aimed at determining people‘s attitude toward elders in Golestan province, 2009.

This cross-sectional study was carried out via convenience sampling on 300 people, who resided in four cities of Golestan province and aged 13-60 years, having at least one elder around. Data was collected by kogan questionnaire and and analyzed by Kruskal-wallis and mann-whitney.

The mean age of the subjects is 24.8. They are Fars (53%) and Turkmen (42%). There is significant relation between attitude toward elders and Variables such as age (P=0.003), ethnicity (P=0/000) and education (P=0/01. Men and women younger than 25 years and people with higher education have more negative attitude. Turkmens have higher positive attitude toward the aged.

Since more negative attitude toward the aged are reported among teens and highly educated adults, we recommend officials for performing some essential interventions to improve this attitude.