WHO har udrabejdet en ny manual og brugerguide omkring alderisme.
Summary
Ageism has a range of negative effects on individuals and societies. Prior to the development of the WHO Ageism Scale, no suitable measure existed to assess levels of ageism across the world in accordance with its currently accepted conceptualisation encompassing stereotypes, prejudices, and discrimination. Ageism is defined by the World Health Organization (WHO) as stereotypes (how we think), prejudice (how we feel), and discrimination (how we act) based on age.
It can manifest in various forms, including institutional, interpersonal, and self-directed ageism and can affect all age groups, though most of what we know about ageism pertains to ageism against older persons. Ageism is highly prevalent, with evidence suggesting that approximately 1 in 2 people are ageist towards older people.
It also has serious and far reaching consequences for people’s health and well-being and economic analyses show that ageism can be hugely costly to societies. Despite the scale and detrimental consequences of ageism, a comprehensive analysis of available ageism measures as part of the United Nations (UN) Global report on ageism found that there were no existing measures capable of measuring ageism as it is currently understood .
The UN Global report on ageism, therefore, called for a new comprehensive, psychometrically robust scale that could be used across age groups and cultural contexts. Such a scale was needed to help illuminate the prevalence of ageism, assessing its risk/protective factors and to evaluate the effectiveness of interventions. In response to this growing need, the WHO Ageism Scale was developed to measure the ageism experiences of individuals (in the WHO Ageism Experiences Scale) as well as people’s ageism towards older persons (in the WHO Ageism Towards Older Persons Scale).
By encompassing the cognitive (stereotypes), affective (prejudice), and behavioural (discrimination) components of ageism, the scale serves as a robust tool for researchers, policymakers, clinicians, educators, and community members seeking to assess age-based biases within and across diverse contexts.
This manual is aimed at researchers, policymakers and government officials, civil society organisations, health and care professionals, and anyone else who has interest in addressing ageism. It provides a practical guide for introducing, administering, scoring, and interpreting the scale. By promoting the adoption of the WHO Ageism Scale, this manual aims to support more valid and reliable measurement of ageism, ultimately contributing to more effective strategies to combat ageism in diverse cultural and generational contexts.
