Elderhostelers' Coping with Nuclear Threat: Peacemaking and Perception of Lifeworld

Abstract

37 persons whose mean age was 71.1 yr., volunteered from an Elderhostel program to participate in a quasiexperimental study of the effect of strategy for coping with nuclear threat on a planetary or lifeworld view. Coping strategy was assessed by the score on 10 forced-choice items of the Peacemaking questionnaire. When 14 high and 10 low scorers were compared on Perception of Lifeworld scores, only chance differences were noted. For this small sample, many scores reached ceiling value because of the insensitivity of the Peacemaking questionnaire. Highly truncated data were also attributed to the fact that Elderhostelers had lived through periods of war and peace. Also, this pilot study coincided with stories in the media in commemoration of the fortieth anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Replication was recommended.