Attitude of Social Workers Toward Older Adult Sexuality Compared to Other Providers

Older adult sexuality is increasingly an area of research, particularly the knowledge and attitudes of healthcare providers.  The Aging Sexual Knowledge and Attitudes Scale (ASKAS) (White, 1982) is the most commonly used scale.  According to a search on Web of Knowledge, researchers cite the ASKAS in 94 articles.  Nonetheless, none of the articles compare knowledge and attitudes across a variety of disciplines.  Based on a comparison of results from the available articles, medical and psychology doctoral students had the most knowledge of older adult sexuality (Snyder & Zweig, 2010), followed closely by health educators (Glass & Webb, 1995).  Older adults in a wellness program had the least knowledge of older adult sexuality (Steinke, 1994), followed closely by community dwelling older adults (Steinke, 1994) and college students (Hillman & Stricker, 1996).  Health educators had the most permissive attitudes (Glass & Webb, 1995) and gynecologists had the most restrictive attitudes (Langer-Most & Langer, 2010).  The statistical significance of the differences by profession could not be calculated because there was not enough available data.

In a study of 178 healthcare providers, including doctors nurses, nurse practitioners, physical therapists, and social workers, participants were asked to rate their level of comfort with older adult sexuality.  They were asked to rate the degree to which they agree with the statement “I am comfortable discussing older adult clients’ sexuality into their later years” on a scale from 1 to 5 with 1 indicating strong disagreement and 5 indicating strong agreement.  Overall the healthcare providers agreed with the statement (M=3.83).  There was no significant effect of profession on comfort [F(4, 160) = .611, p =.66].  There was a significant difference in the comfort scores for those who received training (M=4.13, SD=.914) and those who did not receive training (M=3.57, SD=1.00), t=-3.722,  df =163, p  < .001. The healthcare professionals who received training were more comfortable discussing older adult sexuality.  There was no significant difference (x² = 3.79, df = 4, p = .435) by profession in receipt of older adult sexuality training in school.

When looking at the comfort of the social workers (n=48) alone, the results are similar. Overall the social workers agreed with the statement “I am comfortable discussing older adult clients’ sexuality into their later years” (M=3.95).  Although they report being comfortable more than half (n = 27) did not receive training on older adult sexuality in their professional education.  There was not a significant difference in the comfort scores for those who received training (M=4.05, SD=1.05) and those who did not receive training (M=3.88, SD=.80), t=-.628,  df = 42, p  = .533. Although social workers who received training agreed more strongly that they are comfortable discussing older adult sexuality, these results are not significant. 

Considering the standards for social work education, it may be that the training received by all social workers is similar regardless of self-reported training.  Further research is needed on the impact of education and training on comfort dealing with older adult sexuality for social workers and all healthcare professionals.