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Background: This article presents the protocol for a randomised controlled trial designed to develop and evaluate a psychoeducational intervention aimed at reduce ageism in the workplace, will improve attitudes toward older workers as well as various indicators of well-being and psychosocial functioning in the professional context.
Methods: The study will be conducted at the Faculty of Psychology of the University of Salamanca (Spain). Currently employed with at least five years of tenure in the organization or the relevant sector, performing tasks that involve frequent collaboration with colleagues from different generations will be recruited. Participants will be randomly assigned to two groups: the intervention group, which will undergo a psychoeducational programme consisting of 12 sessions over 3 months; and the control group, which will receive a educational programme of one session. All participants will complete initial and final assessments, as well as a 3-month follow-up, collecting sociodemographic data and applying various psychological, social and health assessment instruments.
Discussion: This protocol describes a comprehensive psychoeducational intervention aimed at reducing negative stereotypical beliefs about older workers and enhance relevant psychosocial variables in the organizational environment, such as job satisfaction, psychological flexibility, perceived social support, perceived health, and self-efficacy in navigating intergenerational work situations. The evidence generated will guide future interventions, policies, and educational programmes to promote preparing workers and teams in several key areas, such as recognising and challenging age-related stereotypes, developing empathy towards colleagues from different generations, promoting inclusive practices in daily interaction and work collaboration and fostering a more equitable and respectful organisational climate towards all ages.
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| Label | Type | Description | Intervention Names |
|---|---|---|---|
| Education Programme | Active Comparator | Objective: Participants will receive general information and recommendations to foster inclusive attitudes towards older workers and promote a positive intergenerational work environment. This minimally active intervention provides basic support without the structured sessions of the psychoeducational programme, facilitating the comparison of effects between groups. Materials: Dossier with instructions and recommendations on inclusion and intergenerational awareness at work. Procedures: Participants will receive the dossier with information on: identifying age stereotypes, good practices for the workplace inclusion of older workers, and basic strategies for promoting a respectful and equitable work environment. |
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| Psychoeducational Programme | Experimental | Objective: The programme seeks to reduce stereotypes and negative attitudes towards older workers, promoting an inclusive and generationally diverse work environment. Its objectives include improving: attitudes towards older workers, psychological flexibility, perceived social support, well-being at work, perceived health, and self-efficacy in managing intergenerational teams. Materials: Projector, computer, screen, presentations, stationery, chairs, tables, and homework log. Procedures: The programme combines structured education with psychoeducational activities. Who conducts it: All sessions are led by psychologists with experience in generational diversity and ageing in the workplace, rotating between three professionals to ensure consistency, thematic accuracy and personalised attention. |
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| Name | Type | Description | Arm Group Labels | Other Names |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Psychoeducational Programme | Behavioral | The programme seeks to reduce stereotypes and negative attitudes towards older workers, promoting an inclusive and generationally diverse work environment. Its objectives include improving: attitudes towards older workers, psychological flexibility, perceived social support, well-being at work, perceived health, and self-efficacy in managing intergenerational teams. |
| Measure | Description | Time Frame |
|---|---|---|
| Attitudes toward older workers | Measured by the Stereotypes toward Aging at Work Questionnaire (CETV-T), adapted from the CENVE (Blanca et al., 2005). It consists of 20 self-administered items, with a 7-point Likert-type scale (from 1=strongly disagree to 7=strongly agree). It assesses four dimensions related to negative attitudes towards retirement: (1) health, (2) economy, (3) status and (4) leisure/family. The final scores indicate more negative attitudes the higher the value obtained. The full scale has a Cronbach's alpha of 0.80, for the factors, the values obtained are: Leisure/leisure time-family an alpha of 0.836, economy 0.791, status 0.78 and health 0.69 (although this factor has the lowest value it is still considered acceptable within psychometric research standards). | Baseline; up to 24 weeks; 3 months follow up |
| Measure | Description | Time Frame |
|---|---|---|
| Job satisfaction and well-being at work | Measured using the Job Satisfaction Scale (JSS) adapted into Spanish (Lukas Mujika et al., 2016). The ESL consists of 15 self-administered items, answered on a 5-point Likert scale (from 1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree). Higher scores indicate greater job satisfaction and a more positive perception of an inclusive and intergenerational working environment.The scale demonstrates good overall reliability (Cronbach's alpha = 0.802) and has been validated using exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. |
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Inclusion Criteria:
Exclusion Criteria:
Workers who meet any of the following conditions will be excluded from the study:
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They will be made available to researchers in the document repository "GREDOS" of the University of Salamanca, Spain.
Data will be available at the end of the study.
Open access for researchers.
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| ID | Term |
|---|---|
| D063506 | Ageism |
| ID | Term |
|---|---|
| D011287 | Prejudice |
| D012919 | Social Behavior |
| D001519 | Behavior |
| D063508 | Social Discrimination |
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The work of sequencing, randomisation, recruitment and allocation of the trial sample will be carried out by research staff who are not involved in the assessments or interventions of each group, thus avoiding any potential bias in the trial.Participants will also be blinded and will not know which group they have been allocated to and therefore which intervention they will receive. In order to minimise any contamination between groups, the assessment process will be carried out by external research staff who will perform the measurements and who have been previously trained and educated to avoid subjective bias in the process, as they will be unaware of the intervention group to which they have been assigned, thus masking the blinded assessment by third parties in the clinical trial. In addition, the researchers responsible for the statistical analysis of the trial will be blinded in order to increase the rigour of the trial process and thus the scientific quality.
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| Education Programme | Behavioral | Participants will receive general information and recommendations to foster inclusive attitudes towards older workers and promote a positive intergenerational work environment. This minimally active intervention provides basic support without the structured sessions of the psychoeducational programme, facilitating the comparison of effects between groups. |
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| Baseline; up to 24 weeks; 3 months follow up |
| Psychological flexibility | Assessed using the Acceptance and Action Questionnaire-II (AAQ-II) (Bond et al., 2011). The AAQ-II is a 7-item questionnaire designed to assess experiential avoidance and psychological inflexibility. Participants were asked to rate their agreement with each statement on a 7-point Likert scale, ranging from 1 (not at all true) to 7 (completely true). The reliability of this instrument in our sample was high (Cronbach's α = 0.949). | Baseline; up to 24 weeks; 3 months follow up |
| Perceived social support | Assessed using the MOS Questionnaire of Perceived Social Support (Sherbourne & Stewart, 1991). It assesses perceived social support. It consists of 20 items. It consists of five factors: support network, emotional/informational social support, instrumental support, positive social interaction and affective support. It has a Likert-type response format of 1 (never) to 5 (always) points. The overall scores range from 20 to 100 points. The higher the score, the more social support the individual perceives. It has a Cronbach's alpha reliability coefficient of 0.97. | Baseline; up to 24 weeks; 3 months follow up |
| Perceived health | Assessed using the Goldberg General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12) (Goldberg & Williams, 1988; Spanish version of Sánchez-López & Dresch, 2008). It allows us to measure perceived health. It has 12 items with 4 response options, from 0 (better than usual) to 3 (much more than usual). Higher scores correspond to a higher level of perceived health. It has good internal consistency, with Cronbach's alphas varying between 0.82 and 0.86 (Goldberg & Williams, 1988); and the Spanish validation has a Cronbach's alpha of 0.76 (Sánchez-López & Dresch, 2008). | Baseline; up to 24 weeks; 3 months follow up |
| Self-efficacy | Assessed by the Escala de Autoeficacia Generalizada (EAG) (Baessler & Schwarzer, 1996). It assesses the stable feeling of personal competence to deal effectively with a variety of stressful situations. It consists of 10 items with four Likert-type response options from 1 (incorrect) to 4 (true). Scores range from 10 to 40 points. Higher scores indicate higher levels of self-efficacy. The scale obtained a Cronbach's alpha of 0.81. | Baseline; up to 24 weeks; 3 months follow up |