Course outline
Module 1
Module 1: Defining Ageism and Its Forms
Defining Ageism and Its Forms
Knowledge check
Q1. Which term is most commonly used to describe prejudice or discrimination against people on the basis of their age?
- A. Sexism
- B. Ageism ✓
- C. Ableism
- D. Classism
Why: Ageism, a term popularised by Robert Butler in 1969, refers to stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination directed at people because of their age. The other terms describe discrimination based on sex, disability, and social class respectively.
Q2. Which of the following is an example of institutional ageism?
- A. A colleague assuming an older worker is resistant to new technology
- B. A family member speaking slowly to a grandparent as if they cannot understand
- C. A company policy that sets a maximum age limit for certain job applicants ✓
- D. A young person making a joke about an elderly relative's memory
Why: Institutional ageism is embedded in formal rules, policies, or practices of organisations or systems. A maximum age limit written into hiring policy is a structural example, whereas the other options describe interpersonal or attitudinal ageism.
Q3. What is 'self-directed ageism', sometimes called internalised ageism?
- A. Older people refusing to accept any help from others
- B. Older people absorbing negative age stereotypes and applying them to themselves ✓
- C. Governments deliberately excluding older citizens from voting
- D. Young people choosing careers that avoid working with older adults
Why: Self-directed ageism occurs when individuals internalise negative beliefs about ageing and begin to believe, for example, that they are less capable simply because they are older. This can reduce confidence and participation.
Q4. Which statement best describes the difference between 'benevolent' and 'hostile' ageism?
- A. Benevolent ageism is legal, while hostile ageism is illegal
- B. Benevolent ageism involves well-meant but patronising assumptions, while hostile ageism involves overt negativity or contempt
- C. Benevolent ageism only affects men, while hostile ageism only affects women
- D. Benevolent ageism occurs in healthcare only, while hostile ageism occurs in workplaces only
Q5. Which of the following is an example of ageism in the media?
- A. Showing older adults only in roles that depict frailty, dependency, or confusion ✓
- B. Broadcasting a documentary about retirement savings
- C. Featuring a 70-year-old scientist explaining a research breakthrough
- D. Publishing an article on the health benefits of regular exercise in later life
Why: Portraying older people predominantly as frail, dependent, or cognitively impaired reinforces negative stereotypes and is a common form of media ageism. The other options either present older people positively or are neutral.
Module 2
Module 2: Historical Roots of Age Discrimination
Historical Roots of Age Discrimination
Knowledge check
Q1. Which term, coined by Robert Butler in 1969, describes discrimination or stereotyping based on age?
- A. Generationalism
- B. Ageism ✓
- C. Senescism
- D. Chronocentrism
Why: Robert Butler coined 'ageism' in 1969 to describe prejudice and discrimination against people because of their age, giving researchers a name for a form of bias that had long existed but lacked a formal label.
Q2. In many pre-industrial societies, what was the typical relationship between older people and social status?
- A. Older people were usually marginalised and removed from community life
- B. Older people often held authority, respect, and control over property and knowledge ✓
- C. Age had no bearing on social standing in any traditional society
- D. Older people were required by law to retire at a fixed age
Why: In many agrarian and pre-industrial communities, elders often held authority because they accumulated land, wisdom, and oral knowledge that the young depended on for survival and decision-making.
Q3. How did the shift to industrialisation in the 18th and 19th centuries affect the status of older workers?
- A. It increased the value of experienced older workers in factories
- B. It reduced the value of accumulated skills, as machines and wage labour favoured physical stamina and speed ✓
- C. It had no measurable effect on older workers' employment
- D. It created national pension systems that guaranteed income for all older adults immediately
Why: Industrial work prized physical strength, speed, and adaptability to new machinery, while the knowledge held by older craftspeople often became obsolete, weakening their position and contributing to the devaluation of old age.
Q4. Which early modern development helped create the modern concept of 'retirement' as a distinct life stage?
- A. The invention of the printing press
- B. The introduction of state pension schemes, such as Bismarck's social insurance in Germany in the 1880s ✓
- C. The abolition of slavery in the Americas
- D. The spread of universal primary education
Why: Bismarck's social insurance laws in 1880s Germany established age-based pensions, helping to define a fixed age at which people were expected to stop working, which became a model for later welfare states.
Q5. What role did the 'Old Age' category play in the emergence of gerontology and geriatrics in the late 19th and early 20th centuries?
- A. It was dismissed by medical science as a non-medical concern
- B. It framed later life as a medical problem of decline, encouraging a deficit-focused view of older people ✓
- C. It encouraged doctors to treat ageing as a healthy and desirable process
- D. It had no influence on how medicine approached older patients
Why: Early geriatrics, influenced by figures like Ignatz Nascher who coined the term in 1909, tended to treat old age as a disease-like state of decline, which reinforced negative assumptions about older people's capacities.
Module 3
Module 3: Ageism in the Workplace
Ageism in the Workplace
Knowledge check
Q1. Which of the following best describes ageism in the workplace?
- A. Preferring younger candidates for a role based on stereotypes about their age rather than their skills ✓
- B. Providing health insurance benefits to employees over the age of 50
- C. Requiring all employees to retire at a fixed age set by law
- D. Offering flexible working hours to parents of young children
Why: Ageism is discrimination or prejudice based on a person's age. Preferring younger candidates because of stereotypes (e.g., that older workers are less adaptable) rather than their actual skills and qualifications is a classic example.
Q2. Which common stereotype about older workers is most often challenged by research on workplace performance?
- A. Older workers tend to have higher levels of job-specific knowledge
- B. Older workers are less reliable and have higher absenteeism ✓
- C. Older workers are generally less willing to learn new skills
- D. Older workers cannot work effectively in teams
Why: Research generally finds that older workers are not less reliable and often have lower absenteeism than younger colleagues. The stereotype that they are unreliable is one of the myths that ageism relies on and that evidence tends to contradict.
Q3. What is the term for a hiring practice in which older applicants are screened out early, for example by removing graduation dates or years of experience from CVs?
- A. Age-blind recruitment ✓
- B. Affirmative action
- C. Mentorship programming
- D. Succession planning
Why: Age-blind recruitment removes age-revealing information so decisions are based on skills and experience. Its purpose is to reduce age bias, which is why it is often recommended as an anti-ageism measure.
Q4. Which legal framework in the United Kingdom prohibits age discrimination in employment?
- A. The Equality Act 2010 ✓
- B. The Pensions Act 1995
- C. The Health and Safety at Work Act 1974
- D. The National Minimum Wage Act 1998
Why: The Equality Act 2010 makes age one of its nine protected characteristics and prohibits direct and indirect age discrimination in employment, among other areas.
Q5. Which of the following is an example of indirect age discrimination in the workplace?
- A. Refusing to promote an employee because they are 60 years old
- B. Requiring all staff to pass a physical fitness test that disadvantages older workers without a genuine job-related need ✓
- C. Advertising a job specifically for candidates aged 25 to 35
- D. Dismissing an employee and stating that they are too old to keep up
Why: Indirect discrimination occurs when a seemingly neutral rule or practice puts people of a certain age at a particular disadvantage without a justifiable reason. A fitness test that disadvantages older workers without a genuine job need is a typical example. The other options describe direct discrimination.
Module 4
Module 4: Media Representations of Older People
Media Representations of Older People
Knowledge check
Q1. Which of the following is a common media stereotype of older people that researchers have identified in films and television?
- A. Older characters are usually shown as highly technologically skilled
- B. Older characters are often portrayed as frail, forgetful, or dependent on others ✓
- C. Older characters are typically depicted as the main drivers of the plot
- D. Older characters are most often shown in romantic leading roles
Why: Content analyses of film and television repeatedly find that older people are underrepresented and, when shown, are often framed as frail, confused, or dependent. This reinforces the view that ageing equals decline.
Q2. What term describes the tendency to portray older people as a homogeneous group, ignoring the wide differences in health, income, and lifestyle among them?
- A. Intergenerational solidarity
- B. Age segregation
- C. Diversity erasure ✓
- D. Gerontological reductionism
Why: Diversity erasure refers to media depicting older people as all alike, usually in narrow roles. In reality, people aged 60 and over differ enormously in health, wealth, ethnicity, and活动 levels, so uniform portrayals are inaccurate.
Q3. What is the 'invisibility' problem in media representations of older people?
- A. Older people are shown too often in advertising aimed at young audiences
- B. Older people are rarely shown at all, particularly in leading or positive roles ✓
- C. Older people are digitally altered to look younger in most broadcasts
- D. Older people are excluded from news coverage about health policy
Why: Older people are significantly underrepresented in mainstream media relative to their share of the population. When they do appear, they are often in minor or supporting roles, which signals that their lives are less worth depicting.
Q4. How can media representations of older people contribute to self-directed ageism?
- A. By encouraging older people to adopt negative age stereotypes about themselves, which can affect their health and behaviour ✓
- B. By giving older people more confidence to pursue new careers
- C. By increasing the number of older people who participate in volunteering
- D. By prompting younger people to seek out intergenerational friendships
Why: Research, including studies by Becca Levy, shows that internalised negative stereotypes can lower older people's self-esteem, willingness to seek care, and even physical outcomes. Media messages are one source of these internalised beliefs.
Q5. Which approach is most often recommended by researchers to counter ageism in media?
- A. Removing all older characters from programmes to avoid stereotyping
- B. Presenting older people in a wider range of roles, including as complex, active, and varied individuals ✓
- C. Showing older people only in heritage or nostalgic settings
- D. Depicting ageing as a problem to be solved with technology
Why: Researchers advocate for more varied, realistic, and multidimensional portrayals of older people across genres and roles. Removing older characters or idealising them both fail to reflect the diversity of later life.
Module 5
Module 5: Health Care and Age Bias
Health Care and Age Bias
Knowledge check
Q1. Which term describes the tendency for healthcare providers to attribute an older patient's symptoms to normal ageing rather than investigating them as potentially treatable conditions?
- A. Diagnostic momentum
- B. Therapeutic nihilism
- C. Age-related attribution bias ✓
- D. Iatrogenic sequencing
Why: Age-related attribution bias occurs when clinicians dismiss symptoms such as fatigue, confusion, or pain as an inevitable part of ageing, which can delay diagnosis and treatment of conditions that are in fact manageable.
Q2. Which of the following is an example of age bias in clinical research practice?
- A. Requiring informed consent from all participants
- B. Routinely excluding older adults from clinical trials due to comorbidity concerns alone ✓
- C. Recording patient outcomes at regular intervals
- D. Using validated diagnostic scales
Why: Excluding older adults from trials simply because they have multiple conditions means evidence is often generated for younger populations, leaving clinicians with limited data on safety and efficacy for older patients.
Q3. What is 'therapeutic nihilism' in the context of ageing and health care?
- A. A patient's refusal of all medical treatment
- B. A belief that treatment is pointless for older people, leading to withholding of appropriate care ✓
- C. A policy of prioritising younger patients during resource shortages
- D. The use of placebo treatments in elderly care
Why: Therapeutic nihilism is the assumption that interventions will not benefit older people, which can result in under-treatment of conditions such as cancer, heart disease, or depression that would respond to care.
Q4. Which statement best reflects evidence about ageism and health outcomes?
- A. Ageist attitudes have no measurable effect on health.
- B. Negative age stereotypes are associated with poorer health outcomes, including reduced recovery and shorter life expectancy in some studies.
- C. Only physical ageing affects health, not attitudes.
- D. Positive age stereotypes harm older people's health.
Q5. Which approach is most likely to reduce age bias in health care delivery?
- A. Assuming all older patients have cognitive decline
- B. Assessing each patient's needs individually rather than relying on chronological age ✓
- C. Limiting specialist referrals for patients over 75
- D. Using age as the primary criterion for treatment decisions
Why: Individualised assessment looks at a person's actual health status, goals, and capacity, rather than using chronological age as a proxy, which reduces discriminatory decisions while respecting patient differences.
Module 6
Module 6: Intergenerational Relationships and Stereotypes
Intergenerational Relationships and Stereotypes
Knowledge check
Q1. Which term refers to the stereotyping, prejudice, or discrimination against people based on their age?
- A. Ageism ✓
- B. Gerontocracy
- C. Senescence
- D. Generativity
Why: Ageism, a term popularised by Robert Butler in 1969, describes stereotyping, prejudice and discrimination directed at people because of their age. The other options refer to political rule by elders, biological ageing, and Erikson's concept of concern for future generations, respectively.
Q2. In intergenerational relationships, what is the 'contact hypothesis' most likely to predict about reducing ageist stereotypes?
- A. Stereotypes increase as contact between age groups increases
- B. Stereotypes are unaffected by any form of contact
- C. Positive, sustained, cooperative contact between age groups tends to reduce stereotypes ✓
- D. Only contact within the same family can change stereotypes
Why: Allport's contact hypothesis proposes that prejudice declines when groups interact under conditions of equal status, shared goals, cooperation and institutional support. Applied to age, well-structured positive contact between generations tends to weaken negative stereotypes.
Q3. Which of the following is an example of a common stereotype about older adults?
- A. Older adults are generally more resistant to learning new technologies ✓
- B. Older adults are always wealthier than younger adults
- C. Older adults never engage in volunteering
- D. Older adults have no life experience to share
Why: The belief that older people are uniformly resistant to new technology is a widespread ageist stereotype. Evidence shows many older adults adopt technology when it is relevant and accessible, and the stereotype ignores considerable variation within the age group.
Q4. What does the term 'intergenerational solidarity' refer to?
- A. Competition between age groups for limited public resources
- B. The bonds of mutual support, affection, and shared norms between generations ✓
- C. Legal restrictions that separate age groups in public spaces
- D. The tendency of young people to reject traditional values
Why: Intergenerational solidarity, a concept developed by Bengtson and colleagues, encompasses affective, associational, consensual, functional, normative and structural dimensions of bonds between generations, such as emotional closeness, support exchange, and shared values.
Q5. Which framing best describes 'intergenerational equity' in debates about an ageing society?
- A. Ensuring that each generation receives fair treatment in the distribution of resources and burdens ✓
- B. Requiring all generations to share identical political views
- C. Guaranteeing that older people hold the majority of public office
- D. Eliminating all retirement benefits to reduce public spending
Why: Intergenerational equity concerns the fair allocation of costs and benefits, such as pensions, healthcare, education and debt, across generations. It is central to policy debates about population ageing, where critics question whether one cohort is burdening another.
Module 7
Module 7: Policy Responses to an Ageing Society
Policy Responses to an Ageing Society
Knowledge check
Q1. Which term describes the process by which a population's median age rises over time due to lower fertility and longer life expectancy?
- A. Demographic transition
- B. Population ageing ✓
- C. Dependency reversal
- D. Cohort replacement
Why: Population ageing refers to the increase in the share and median age of older people in a population, driven by falling fertility and rising life expectancy. Demographic transition describes the broader shift from high to low birth and death rates, and is a related but less specific term.
Q2. What does the old-age dependency ratio measure?
- A. The proportion of older people receiving state pensions
- B. The number of people aged 65 and over relative to the working-age population ✓
- C. The share of household income spent on elder care
- D. The number of older people living alone
Why: The old-age dependency ratio compares the number of people typically considered economically dependent due to age (usually 65+) with the working-age population (usually 15 or 20 to 64). It is a key indicator policymakers use to assess pressure on pension and health systems.
Q3. Which policy response is most directly aimed at extending working lives in response to population ageing?
- A. Raising the state pension age ✓
- B. Introducing universal child benefits
- C. Expanding public housing construction
- D. Reducing funding for vocational training
Why: Raising the state pension age delays when people can begin drawing a pension, encouraging longer working lives and easing fiscal pressure from a growing number of retirees. The other options do not directly address the labour supply implications of an older population.
Q4. What is 'ageism' in the context of employment policy?
- A. Government subsidies for training older workers
- B. Discrimination or prejudice against people based on their age, such as refusing to hire or promote older workers ✓
- C. A policy requiring employers to offer flexible hours
- D. The use of age-based pension eligibility rules
Why: Ageism refers to stereotyping, prejudice, or discrimination on the basis of age. In employment, it can take the form of hiring or promotion decisions that disadvantage older workers, and it is often targeted by anti-discrimination legislation.
Q5. Which of the following is an example of a policy promoting 'active ageing'?
- A. Mandatory retirement at age 60
- B. Providing lifelong learning opportunities and volunteering support for older adults ✓
- C. Eliminating all public pensions
- D. Restricting older adults' access to healthcare
Why: Active ageing policies aim to maximise health, participation, and security as people age. Lifelong learning and volunteering opportunities keep older adults engaged socially and economically, whereas mandatory retirement and restricted access to services work against that goal.