Abstract
Objective: This study examined knowledge of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and correlates of AD knowledge in a sample of Chinese American older adults living in the Phoenix metropolitan area of the United States. Methods: Survey data were collected from 385 Chinese Americans age 55 or older (M = 72.43, SD = 8.67) recruited from various settings not limited to senior housing facilities, senior clubs, senior centers and church groups. Results: Participants responded to a 24-item true/false AD knowledge scale with 73 % accuracy. Multivariate regression analyses found that participants who held more traditional Chinese cultural beliefs of AD tended to have less AD knowledge. Older women had more knowledge of AD than men when educational differences were controlled. Participants who used media to acquire AD information had more AD knowledge than those did not. Conclusions: AD educational programs should target domains (e.g., risk factors, symptoms, and caregiving) about which Chinese American elders tend to have less knowledge; AD information should be disseminated through appropriate media to outreach Chinese American elders more effectively. Addressing the biases in elders’ cultural beliefs of AD should be incorporated in AD educational programs.
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Author note
Dr. Fei Sun is an assistant professor in the School of Social Work at Arizona State University (ASU) in the U.S. He will be the corresponding author of this paper. Ms. Xiang Gao is a doctoral student at the School of Social Work at ASU. Dr. Hui Shen is an associate professor at the Sociology Department at Nanjing University in China. Dr. Denise Burnette is a professor at the School of Social Work at Columbia University.
Statement of ethical approval
This study was approved by the IRB at Arizona State University. The protocol number is 1105006417.
Declaration of contribution of authors
Dr. Fei Sun: research design, data analysis and manuscript writing. Ms. Xiang Gao: data collection, analysis and results writing. Dr. Hui Shen: writing of the discussion section. Dr. Burnette: research design, introduction of conceptual models and manuscript editing.
Statement of funding
The authors acknowledge the support from the Silberman Faculty Grant Program of the New York Community Trust Fund for funding this project. The sponsor has no role in research design, subject recruitment, data analysis and paper writing.
Acknowledgments
The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest. The authors are grateful to Mr. Cong Wang, Mr. Yun Teng, and Ms. Yuanyuan Wang for their assistance with data collection. The authors acknowledge the funding support from Silberman Faculty Grant Program of the New York Community Trust Fund.
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Sun, F., Gao, X., Shen, H. et al. Levels and Correlates of Knowledge about Alzheimer’s Disease among Older Chinese Americans. J Cross Cult Gerontol 29, 173–183 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10823-014-9229-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10823-014-9229-6