In addition to the regular curriculum, the experimental group of nursing students were required to receive the intervention program developed by this study.

Nursing undergraduates in the control group received regular course teaching and practical activities, including geriatric nursing, daily courses and community activities.

The intervention program uses direct contact and four types of indirect contact as the intervention strategy and general framework, and is divided into three main steps, assessing and reflecting on aging stereotypes, carrying out indirect and direct contact, and evaluating the effectiveness of the intervention. The time period is 12 weeks, with the interventionists comprising the researcher and nursing students. The forms of the intervention include holding mini-lectures, organizing participation in voluntary activities, and nostalgia interviews.

The implicit effect value were measured by the Single-Category Implicit Association Test (SC- IAT), a time-limited word categorization task, using the E-Prime procedure. The SC-IAT program consists of four blocks: Blocks I and III are practice blocks, while Blocks II and IV are formal tests. The data analyzed were derived from Blocks II and IV. Blocks I and II feature incompatible tasks with positive words for the elderly on the left and negative words on the right. Blocks III and IV are compatible tasks, with positive words on the right and elderly concept words and negative words on the left. The implicit effect value (D) was calculated by subtracting the mean reaction time of the compatible task from that of the incompatible task, then dividing by the standard deviation of correct reaction times. A D value of 0 indicates a neutral implicit aging stereotype, while a value less than 0 suggests a negtive stereotype.

The Geriatric Nursing Willingness Scale was used to measure the intention to engage in geriatric nursing. The scale consists of 21 entries divided into four main sections: behavioral attitudes, subjective norms, perceived behavioral control, and behavioral intentions. It was scored on a 5-point Likert scale, with positive entries scoring 10, 8, 6, 4, and 2 in that order, and the reverse for negative entries. The Cronbach' α coefficient in this study was 0.787.