Background/Purpose The purpose of this project was to examine the impact of a senior fitness testing experience on students' attitudes toward older adults.
Method The participants were undergraduate exercise science students enrolled in a senior-level exercise programming for special populations course (n = 32). Two sections of the same class were randomly selected to serve as a treatment or control class. The treatment class completed an educational unit on exercise programming for older adults which included senior fitness testing at a local YMCA. The control class completed the same unit without the fitness testing experience. However, the control class did participate in senior fitness testing 8 weeks after the study was completed. Attitudes toward older adults were assessed using two scales: Polizzi's Aging Semantic Differential Scale (ASD) and the attitudes scale developed by the Student Assisted Independent Living (SAIL) project. Attitudes were assessed at baseline, after the initial intervention, and following the fitness testing experience of the control class.
Analysis/Results For the SAIL scale, a significant group-by-time interaction effect was observed (p <.05). Both groups significantly improved attitudes following the initial intervention, however, the effect in the treatment class was twice as large as the control class. At follow-up, attitudes continued to improve in the control class. For the ASD, no significant effects were observed.
Conclusions These results provide preliminary evidence that interacting with older adults may be better at improving attitudes among college students than education alone. Further study is recommend in other disciplines and courses and utilizing true randomly assignment if possible.