Age Bias: Physical Therapists and Older Patients

The purposes of this study were to determine if, given a hypothetical patient description, physical therapists would establish the aggressiveness of treatment goals on the basis of the patient's age and to examine the relationship of both attitudes toward and knowledge about elderly adults to goal-setting aggressiveness for an elderly patient. Three questionnaires were administered to 127 therapists in clinical settings. Unbeknown to the therapists, half received a description in which the patient's age was 28 and the other half received a description of the same patient but with the age as 78. Therapists were significantly less aggressive in their goal setting with the elderly patient. Among therapists who received the old patient description, those with a more positive attitude were significantly more aggressive in goal setting for the elderly patient. Knowledge scores did not correlate with either aggressiveness or attitude in this group.