Perceptions of Elder Mistreatment in a Rural Kentucky County

To examine rural community residents perspectives on Elder Mistreatment we designed the “Community assessment Elder Mistreatment tool” (CAEM). Eighty randomly selected adults (age > 21 years) from Perry County, Kentucky completed this questionnaire via telephone (using the CATI system). Perry County is an ideal community to conduct this exploratory study due to its rural designation (completely rural county in the U.S. Census Bureau, 2008) and diverse demographic profile. In this poster, we will present the CAEM and will discuss some of the preliminary results. The CAEM was designed as short fictional scenarios, similar in nature where the race /age / socioeconomic characteristics of both victim and perpetrator where changed in the story to study how these factors affect the perception of the respondents. The groups analyzed will be poor/female/exploitation, rich/female/exploitation, poor female/cognitively impaired rich female/cognitively impaired and poor/male/exploitation, rich/male/exploitation, poor male/cognitively impaired rich male/cognitively impaired In addition, items in the CAEM included 28 in-depth questions to assess the respondent's relationships in the community on the nature and frequency of community involvement in the previous year.