Dan Lago

Companion Animals, Attitudes Toward Pets, and Health Outcomes among the Elderly: A Long-Term Follow-Up

AbstractThe Companion Animal Project has longitudinally followed a sample of rural, community-dwelling older persons to obtain basic descriptive information on the pattern and meaning of pet ownership among the elderly and to evaluate the impact of an organization formed to support pet ownership among the elderly.Two telephone interviews were conducted with the entire sample (N=maximum of 355) in 1984 and 1987. Brief subscales of key items were completed from earlier in-person interviews assessing changes in animal-ownership status, physical health, social activities, perceived social support, emotional well-being, and demographic changes. In 1987, the Pet Relationship Scale (PRS), developed from earlier in-person interviews (Lago et al. 1985), was added to the telephone battery.Results reveal mortality and attrition are higher for former owners than current owners, though the differences are not significant. Pet ownership has declined to 40% of the sample. Declining health status is a stronger predictor ...

The Well-Being of Older Women: The Importance of Pet and Human Relations

The present study sought to determine whether attachment to companion animals is significantly related to the physical and psychological well-being of older women. Network resources, network intera...

The Pet Relationship Scale: Replication of Psychometric Properties in Random Samples and Association With Attitudes Toward Wild Animals

AbstractRecent interest in the human-companion animal bond (HCAB) has been reflected in increased efforts to develop self-report attitudinal scales about affectionate relationships with pet Animals. A recent review and critique of pet attitude assessments indicated that most scale development efforts used small nonrandom samples, did not report psychometric characteristics, and paid inadequate attention to concurrent validation of the resulting measures. This article reports on the continued refinement and validation of the Pet Relationship Scales (PRS) in a large random sample independent from the two samples used to develop the scales. The random sample showed distinct differences in responses as compared with the two previously used samples, highlighting the need to test animal attitudes in samples drawn from the general population, and to examine them in greater detail in relation to other personal and situational factors that might mediate the influence of attitudes on behavior directed toward animals.

INSTITUTIONAL BARRIERS TO OLDER LEARNERS IN HIGHER EDUCATION: A CRITIQUE OF FEE‐WAIVER PROGRAMS

Fee‐waiver programs for older persons wishing to take college courses are widely established throughout the United States. In place since the 1970s, after almost a decade of operation it has become apparent that these programs are not meeting the needs of either older persons or universities. This paper reviews some of the assumptions and characteristic policies of fee‐waiver programs and contrasts them with characteristics of the aging population and older learners in setting forth some tentative recommendations for changes in the posture of higher education toward the older population.

The development and evaluation of training standards for the aging network and academia: I. Background and rationale.

This is the third of four papers describing a cooperative project which set out to develop training standards for Area Agency on Aging management and casework/counseling personnal in the aging network in Pennsylvania. In this paper conclusions and implications of the project are presented and some of the key policy issues in the use of the standards for personnel management and curriculum development are discussed. A model for the development of educational materials for use in the aging network is presented.