• Korean Journal of Social Welfare
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• v.39
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• pp.266-289
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• 1999

The purpose of this study is to measure the social workers' knowledge of aging and attitude toward the elderly in Korea, and to find out the variables that may influence the social workers' attitude. One hundred and eighty three social workers working in a community welfare center were given the questionnaire containing the Kyung San Facts on Aging Quiz to measure the level of knowledge of aging and Yoon(1988)'s scale to find the direction of attitude toward the elderly. The results of this study are analyzed as follows: (1) The social workers' level of knowledge of aging was 65.3%, which was higher than America nurses(62.0%) and Korean nurses(65.0%). (2) The mean of social workers' attitude toward the elderly 65.5 points, which was more positive than nurses in other studies. (3) The social workers' levels of knowledge of aging(p<0.001), personal experience with the elderly(p<0.001), and volunteer experience for the elderly(p<0.05) influence the social workers' attitude toward the elderly. Based on the research results, implications for the future practice are discussed, and suggestions for making social workers' attitude toward the elderly more positive are also included.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare Studies
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• v.47 no.1
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• pp.123-149
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• 2016

Purpose of this study is to find the way to improve older people's life satisfaction from identifying factors, which were derived from exploring several variables (perceived health, mental health, health literacy, and mental health literacy), affecting perception on ageing positively and negatively. This study used data (400 people age 65 and over) from survey on ageism and age integration conducted by 'supporting project of enhancing humanities and social capacity' of National Research Foundation of Korea. The results are as followed; 1) older people negatively perceived psycho-social ageing; 2) older people had high level of depression; 3) showing slightly low level of health literacy and mental health literacy; 4) depression, perceived health and mental health literacy were significant factors influence on perceived psycho-social aging. With these results, the ways were suggested to improve positive psycho-social ageing and quality of life.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare
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• v.60 no.1
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• pp.211-231
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• 2008

In phase 1 of the study, data for the construct and items of KESAS(The Korean Elderly's Successful Aging Scale) were collected by indepth interviews with a purposive sampling group of 25 elderly people and focus group interviews with four groups. Content analysis was applied to the data and from this analysis were emerged six key categories of successful aging. In phase 2 of the study, 78 items were collected from the data of 2 sets of interviews mentioned above. Through pilot test, preliminary 66 items are selected. In phase 3 of the study, 597 cases collected from the survey were divided randomly into 345 developmental samples and 252 validity samples. The items were examined exploratorily with the developmental samples and confirmatorily factor analysis with validity samples. Confirmatory factor analysis supported the hypothesized six-factor structure of KESAS, which finally resulted in consisting of 31 items. Six factors are as follows: 'autonomous life', 'self-completion orientation', 'positive life participation', 'satisfaction with one's offsprings', 'self-acceptance', 'other-acceptance'. Cronbach's alpha estimate and split-half estimates of the scale were .903 and .845, which confirms that the scale has reliability. This six-factor model exhibited a good fit on the basis of the overall fit measure criteria(TLI=.983, RMSEA=.057) aquired by using the confirmatory factor analysis. Moreover, KESAS was significantly related highly(r=.72) to the 'Quality of Life for the Korean Elderly'. This proved concurrent validity of the scale.

• 한국노년학
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• v.29 no.3
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• pp.953-970
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• 2009

The successful aging paradigm suggests that the elderly keep their social ties and actively participate in various activities in later life. Many Korean studies on aging, however, have overlooked the importance of various social activities and relationships beyond kinship. This article aims to investigate the perceived social activities among Korean elders to comprehend the subjectivity of successful aging. 613 respondents, over 50 years old, are selected from a national survey data which was collected by face-to-face interview based on the structured questionnaire. The respondents are classified into pre old (50-64), young old (65-74), old old (over 75). Major findings are as follows. The social activities are grouped into two sub-categories: 'relational activity' and 'productive activity'. The activity types are different by the age cohorts. Various activities are considered in terms of one's needs or motivations, and properly chosen based on the subjective evaluation during life course. Both demographic variables such as sex, area and social context variables such as marital status, living-together show influence on the activity type choices. Plans for later life and work ethics are important as well. Policies regarding social participation emphasizing productivity should positively consider relational motives, as perceived by the Korean elderly.

• 한국노년학
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• v.32 no.3
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• pp.777-800
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• 2012

This paper aims to estimate the effects of environmental variables on volunteering among older persons and decide relationships between independent and dependent variables. The thesis conceptually points out that the integrated theory of resources too much emphasizes the important roles of human, social and cultural capital, but overlooks the influences of ecological environments in explaining volunteering among the older persons. And the thesis tries to apply the general ecological theory of aging to explaining volunteering of older people together with resource frameworks, and to estimate the effects of ecological environment variables on volunteerism for senior citizens. Using a micro data of 2009 National Social Survey by Statistics Korea, the paper screens out 10,268 subjects who are believed to socially retire and be above 55 years older. The multiple OLS regression and binomial logistic regression techniques are used to estimate the effects of ecological environments and resources on volunteering. The analysis results show that all of environmental and resource variables are related to volunteering at the level of p<.000. This means that environmental variables have independent effects on the volunteerism, controlling for resource variables. This results suggest that both theories have empirical evidences in explaining volunteerism in Korea. Also, at the end of paper, theoretical and policy implications for practices and future studies are discussed.

• 건강소식
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• v.32 no.6
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• pp.20-23
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• 2008

고령화 사회와 더불어 급격한 증가추세에 있는 것이 바로 '백내장' 발병률이다. 특히 노인성 백내장은 60세 이상 노인에게 많이 나타나는 노화현상의 하나로 주 위에서 흔히 볼 수 있어 대수롭지 않게 생각하는 경우가 많은데, 자칫 시력을 잃을 수도 있는 위험한 질병임을 간과해서는 안 된다. 하얗게 머리가 세어가듯 점차 수정체의 투명성을 잃어가는 노인성 백내장. 사물이 뿌옇게 보이고 눈부심 현상이 두드러지는 등 노인의 눈을 위협하는 백내장에 대해 알아보자.

• Korea journal of population studies
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• v.35 no.1
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• pp.53-75
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• 2012

This study aims to identify and evaluate the contents of ageism and to develop instrument of ageism. Ageism instrument development remains a necessary in aging research, for the explication of actual condition of ageing. The current study describes multidimensional view of ageism toward aging and the elderly. After pre-test and review of professionals, 31 items was constructed. Data were obtained from KGSS Survey of 1535 participants. The sample was randomly divided into two group to test reliability and validity of the scale. Finally, the 23-items with seven factors were suggested, based on the internal reliability and exploratory factor analysis with the first group. Another group were conducted confirmatory factor analysis. The results showed that the final 23-item scale with seven factors had a good model fit. Development and refinement of ageism scale are necessary elements for proceeding beyond theoretical and empirical discussions in ageism. It also provides a implications for current views of ageism and strategies for reducing ageism.

• 한국노년학
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• v.28 no.4
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• pp.925-940
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• 2008

As the proportion of old people in contemporary societies steadily increases, the influence on cognitive rehabilitation strategy of the memory deficit associated with normal and pathological aging grows greater as well. This paper reviewed the current memory rehabilitation techniques for older adults. In the first part of this article, human memory systems as a framework for understanding memory aging were considered. In the second part, research findings concerning memory performance in normal aging and Alzheimer's disease were reviewed. Finally, recent evidence for the kinds of memory rehabilitation procedures with proven efficacy were offered. The existent memory rehabilitation technique have focused on prompt of residual explicit memory, use of preserved implicit memory, utilization of memory external memory aids. A suggestion of memory training based on brain plasticity as a novel approach is offered.

• Journal of Nutrition and Health
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• v.33 no.1
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• pp.86-101
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• 2000

Various kinds of living circumstances are making population structure of Korean changed. That is, number of the children is decreased and that of the aged is increased. It is predicted that population of the children and the aged will be almost same until 2020. With above, as the expectation of the aged on healthy living might be increased, some special programs for the aged will be needed strongly. At this point, Korean aged population might be economically poor, comparing with other generation. In general, economic factor affects the subjective living-satisfaction and health status of them. Moreover, educational status, household shape and family tieing also affect their health status. According to the foreign articles, health status of the aged might be related to income, educational status, job, employed or/not, marital status, family structure, sex, and childhood condition. decrease of the income or unemployment could make the death rate of the aged higher. During childhood, discordance among the family might affect their health status after. IGUR is also important factor to affect the adulthood health. Positive life style of the aged would lessen their unequality of the health among them. Nutritional status of the Korean aged population might be indicated under the nutritional recommendation. It is affected by their income, education level, social class, and residing place. (Korean J Nutrition 33(1) : 86-101, 2000)

• Korean Journal of Cognitive Science
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.111-132
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• 2013

Previous research has shown that aging asymmetrically affects various functions in language. It is known that older adults show deficits in language production compared to young adults, while the performance in semantic processing is similar between older and young adults. The tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) phenomenon effectively reflects failure in retrieval of phonological knowledge. Older adults report TOTs more often than young adults and the cause of this phenomenon has been explained by two frameworks: the 'blocking hypothesis' and 'transmission deficit hypothesis'. This study examines the effect of aging on the retrival of phonological knowledge by inducing TOTs in the laboratory. Two variables were manipulated: age and word category. Participants were young and older adults, and stimuli was selected from 5 categories of words. After the participants read a definition about a target word, they reported three conditions: 'know', 'don't know', 'TOT'. The results were as follows: First, the older adults reported TOTs more often than the young adults. Second, TOTs occurred more in proper nouns such as names of persons and places. Third, in the category that TOTs occurred more often, there was a bigger age difference. Fourth, older adults reported fewer alternative words during TOT than young adults. Fifth, participants tended to report the partial information during TOT in characters. These results show the age-related difficulty in the retrieval of phonological knowledge in Korean. It is explained by the transmission deficit hypothesis and the characteristics of Korean orthography and phonology.