Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- PART ONE BASIC ISSUES
- PART TWO DIMENSIONS OF TESTING
- PART THREE APPLICATIONS OF TESTING
- 9 Special Children
- 10 Older Persons
- 11 Testing in a Cross-Cultural Context
- 12 Disability and Rehabilitation
- PART FOUR THE SETTINGS
- PART FIVE CHALLENGES TO TESTING
- Appendix: Table to Translate Difficulty Level of a Test Item into a z Score
- References
- Test Index
- Index of Acronyms
- Subject Index
- References
10 - Older Persons
from PART THREE - APPLICATIONS OF TESTING
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- PART ONE BASIC ISSUES
- PART TWO DIMENSIONS OF TESTING
- PART THREE APPLICATIONS OF TESTING
- 9 Special Children
- 10 Older Persons
- 11 Testing in a Cross-Cultural Context
- 12 Disability and Rehabilitation
- PART FOUR THE SETTINGS
- PART FIVE CHALLENGES TO TESTING
- Appendix: Table to Translate Difficulty Level of a Test Item into a z Score
- References
- Test Index
- Index of Acronyms
- Subject Index
- References
Summary
AIM This chapter looks at testing older persons. We first discuss some basic issues such as defining who is an older person, practical issues of testing, and some general comments related to personality, cognitive, and attitude testing. Then we look at a number of specific areas of relevance: attitudes toward older persons, anxiety about aging, life satisfaction, marital satisfaction, morale, coping, death and dying, neuropsychological assessment, memory, and depression.
SOME OVERALL ISSUES
Currently, there is great interest in older persons, in part, because the number of older persons and their relative frequency within the general population has increased substantially (John, Cavanaugh, Krauss-Whitbourne, 1999). Exactly who is an “older person”? Chronological age is often used as the criterion, with age 65 as the cutoff point. Terms such as the young-old (ages 65 to 74) vs. the old-old (75 years and older) have been proposed (Neugarten, 1974), as related to various physical and sociopsychological characteristics. The term aging, as J. E. Birren and B. A. Birren (1990) so well state, implies something that is associated with chronological age but not identical with it. Thus the term is used in two ways – as an independent variable used to explain other phenomena (e.g., there are changes that occur in intellectual processes as one gets older) and as a dependent variable explained by other processes (e.g., lack of support by others creates aging difficulties).
Information
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Psychological TestingAn Introduction, pp. 257 - 271Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2006
References
Costa, P. T., & McCrae, R. R. (1984). Concurrent validation after 20 years: The implications of personality stability for its assessment. In , , , , , , & (Eds.), Normal human aging: The Baltimore longitudinal study of aging (NIH Publication No. 84-2450). Washington, D.C.: U.S. Public Health Service.
(1986). The Beck Depression Inventory and older adults. Clinical Gerontologist, 5, 149–163.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
(1982). Know thy memory: The use of questionnaires to assess and study memory. Psychological Bulletin, 92, 434–452.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, , , & (1997). Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D) as a screening instrument for depression among community-residing older adults. Psychology and Aging, 12, 277–287.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
, , , , & (1997). What do older good and poor sleepers do during periods of nocturnal wakefulness? The Sleep Behaviors Scale: 60 +. Psychology and Aging, 12, 170–182.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
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