Kogan Nathan, Tucker Jennifer, Porter Matthew
Psychology Department, New School for Social Research, New York, NY 10011, USA.
Int J Aging Hum Dev. 2011;73(1):1-25. doi: 10.2190/AG.73.1.a.
Successful efforts by biologists to substantially increase the life span of non-human animals has raised the possibility of extrapolation to humans, which in turn has given rise to bioethical argumentation, pro and con. The present study converts these arguments into pro- and anti-longevity items on a questionnaire and examines the structure and correlates of the resultant life-extension domain. A 35-item Life-Extension Questionnaire (LEQ) was administered to a mixed-age sample of 164 respondents and a more age-homogeneous sample of 101 well-educated older adults. Demographic information (age, sex, ethnicity, education, marital status) was also obtained. In both samples, exploratory factor analysis of the LEQ (with Promax rotation) yielded three factors labeled Utopian Vision (UV), Personal Emotion Rejection (PER), and Social Economic Burden (SEB). Of the 35 LEQ items, 24 manifested similar factor loading patterns across the two samples--11 for UV, 9 for PER, and 4 for SEB. Coefficients of congruence further supported the case for factorial replication across the two samples. Chronological age correlated positively with UV factor scores in both samples, indicating a trend toward stronger prolongevity attitudes in older relative to younger cohorts. Individual differences in life-extension attitudes are seen as mirroring the differences among bioethicists in the domain.
生物学家成功大幅延长非人类动物寿命的努力引发了将这一成果外推至人类的可能性，这反过来又引发了支持和反对的生物伦理争论。本研究将这些争论转化为问卷上支持和反对延长寿命的项目，并研究由此产生的寿命延长领域的结构及其相关因素。一份包含35个项目的寿命延长问卷（LEQ）被施测于164名混合年龄的受访者样本以及101名年龄更相近的受过良好教育的老年人样本。同时还获取了人口统计学信息（年龄、性别、种族、教育程度、婚姻状况）。在两个样本中，对LEQ进行探索性因素分析（采用Promax旋转）得到了三个因素，分别标记为乌托邦愿景（UV）、个人情感排斥（PER）和社会经济负担（SEB）。在35个LEQ项目中，有24个在两个样本中表现出相似的因素负荷模式——乌托邦愿景11个，个人情感排斥9个，社会经济负担4个。一致性系数进一步支持了两个样本间因素复制的情况。在两个样本中，实际年龄均与UV因素得分呈正相关，表明相对于年轻群体，老年群体中支持延长寿命态度的趋势更强。寿命延长态度的个体差异被视为反映了该领域生物伦理学家之间的差异。
