CHAPTER 1: STUDYING ADULT DEVELOPMENT AND AGING
Chapter Outline
This chapter introduces to students the idea that aging is a lifelong process, which has already
begun for them. It is important for students to understand that adult development and aging is just
one part of the life span, and to truly understand this we must consider not only a person’s
chronological age but also what life experiences a person has had. To this end, a discussion of
research methods used in adult development research can illustrate some of these points (e.g., age
effects, cohort effects, and time-of-measurement).
PERSPECTIVES ON ADULT DEVELOPMENT AND AGING
A) Gerontology: study of aging from maturity through old age
B) Ageism: discrimination against older adults based on their age
C) The Life-Span Perspective
1) Divided into two phases: an early (childhood and adolescence) and a later phase (young
adulthood, middle age, and old age)
2) Four key features of the life-span perspective
(a) Multidirectionality: development involves both growth and decline
(b) Plasticity: one’s capacity is not predetermined
(c) Historical context: each of us develops within a historical time and culture in which
we are born and grow up
(d) Multiple causation: how we develop results from a variety of forces (see section on
forces of development for more detail)
D) The Demographics of Aging
1) Population Trends in the United States
(a) Older adults are the fastest growing section of the United States population, in
particular those over 85
, 2) Diversity in Older Adults in the U.S.
(a) Ethnic groups in the United States are increasing faster than European Americans
3) Population Trends around the World
(a) The numbers of older adults will increase in nearly all areas of the world
II) ISSUES IN STUDYING ADULT DEVELOPMENT AND AGING
A) The Forces of Development
1) Biological forces: genetic and health-related factors
2) Psychological forces: perceptual, cognitive, emotional, and personality factors
3) Sociocultural forces: interpersonal, societal, cultural, and ethnic factors
4) Life-cycle forces: how the same event or combination of forces affect people at different
points in their lives
5) Biopsychosocial framework: includes biological, psychological, and sociocultural forces
6) Each of us is the product of a unique combination of these forces
B) Interrelations among the Forces: Developmental Influences
1) Normative age-graded influences: biological, psychological, and sociocultural forces that
are highly correlated with chronological age
2) Normative history-graded influences: events that most people in a culture experience at
the same time
3) Nonnormative influences: events that may be important for a particular individual but
not experienced by most people
C) Culture and Ethnicity
1) Culture: shared basic value orientations, norms, beliefs, and customary habits and ways
of learning
2) Ethnicity: individual and collective sense of identity based on historical and cultural
group membership
D) The Meaning of Age
1) Primary aging: normal, disease-free change over the life span
2) Secondary aging: developmental changes that are related to disease, lifestyle, and other
environmentally induced changes that are not inevitable
, 3) Tertiary aging: rapid losses that occur shortly before death
4) Chronological age: index variable that allows one to represent events in standard,
calendar time
5) Other ways to define age
(a) Perceived age
(b) Biological age
(c) Psychological age
(d) Sociocultural age
E) Core Issues in Development
1) Nature-Nurture Controversy: examines the extent to which hereditary (nature) and
environmental influences (nurture) determine who we are
2) Stability-Change Controversy: examines the degree to which people stay the same over
time or change over time
3) Continuity-Discontinuity Controversy: examines specific developmental tasks from the
perspective of being either a smooth evolution over time (continuity) or marked by
abrupt shifts (discontinuity)
4) Universal versus Context-Specific Controversy: is there one pathway (universal) of
development or several pathways (context-specific)?
III) RESEARCH METHODS
A) Measurement in Adult Development and Aging Research
1) Reliability: extent to which a measure provides a consistent index of the behavior or
topic of interest
2) Validity: extent to which a measure measures what researchers think it should measure
3) Systematic Observations: involves watching people and recording what they say or do
(a) There are two types of systematic observations
(i) Naturalistic observation: observing how people behave spontaneously in real-
life situations
(ii) Structured observations: done by creating a setting that is likely to elicit the
behavior of interest
, 4) Sampling Behavior with Tasks: creation of tasks when one can’t observe behavior
directly
5) Self-Reports: people’s answers to questions about a topic of interest
6) Representative Sampling: a subset of a population that is representative of the
population of interest
B) General Designs for Research
1) Experimental Design: systematic manipulation of a key factor (independent variable)
that the research believes is responsible for a behavior and observing its effects on one
or more other behaviors (dependent variables)
(a) Provides insight into cause-and-effect relationships and involves random
assignment of participants to experimental and control groups
2) Correlational Design: examines the relations among two or more variables as they exist
naturally
(a) Cause-and-effect relationships cannot be determined
3) Case Studies: systematic investigations of a single person that provide detailed
descriptions
C) Designs for Studying Development
1) Age, Cohort, and Time of Measurement
(a) Age effects: occur as a result of the underlying age-related changes in biological,
psychological, and sociocultural factors
(b) Cohort effects: differences caused by experiences and circumstances unique to the
generation to which one belongs
(c) Time-of-measurement effects: reflect differences in sociocultural, environmental,
historical, or other events at the time the data is obtained
2) Cross-sectional Designs: developmental differences are identified by comparing groups
of people varying in age at a single time
3) Longitudinal Designs: the same individuals are observed repeatedly at different points
in their lives
4) Sequential Designs: involve using more than one cross-sectional (cross-sequential) or
longitudinal (longitudinal-sequential) design simultaneously
Chapter Outline
This chapter introduces to students the idea that aging is a lifelong process, which has already
begun for them. It is important for students to understand that adult development and aging is just
one part of the life span, and to truly understand this we must consider not only a person’s
chronological age but also what life experiences a person has had. To this end, a discussion of
research methods used in adult development research can illustrate some of these points (e.g., age
effects, cohort effects, and time-of-measurement).
PERSPECTIVES ON ADULT DEVELOPMENT AND AGING
A) Gerontology: study of aging from maturity through old age
B) Ageism: discrimination against older adults based on their age
C) The Life-Span Perspective
1) Divided into two phases: an early (childhood and adolescence) and a later phase (young
adulthood, middle age, and old age)
2) Four key features of the life-span perspective
(a) Multidirectionality: development involves both growth and decline
(b) Plasticity: one’s capacity is not predetermined
(c) Historical context: each of us develops within a historical time and culture in which
we are born and grow up
(d) Multiple causation: how we develop results from a variety of forces (see section on
forces of development for more detail)
D) The Demographics of Aging
1) Population Trends in the United States
(a) Older adults are the fastest growing section of the United States population, in
particular those over 85
, 2) Diversity in Older Adults in the U.S.
(a) Ethnic groups in the United States are increasing faster than European Americans
3) Population Trends around the World
(a) The numbers of older adults will increase in nearly all areas of the world
II) ISSUES IN STUDYING ADULT DEVELOPMENT AND AGING
A) The Forces of Development
1) Biological forces: genetic and health-related factors
2) Psychological forces: perceptual, cognitive, emotional, and personality factors
3) Sociocultural forces: interpersonal, societal, cultural, and ethnic factors
4) Life-cycle forces: how the same event or combination of forces affect people at different
points in their lives
5) Biopsychosocial framework: includes biological, psychological, and sociocultural forces
6) Each of us is the product of a unique combination of these forces
B) Interrelations among the Forces: Developmental Influences
1) Normative age-graded influences: biological, psychological, and sociocultural forces that
are highly correlated with chronological age
2) Normative history-graded influences: events that most people in a culture experience at
the same time
3) Nonnormative influences: events that may be important for a particular individual but
not experienced by most people
C) Culture and Ethnicity
1) Culture: shared basic value orientations, norms, beliefs, and customary habits and ways
of learning
2) Ethnicity: individual and collective sense of identity based on historical and cultural
group membership
D) The Meaning of Age
1) Primary aging: normal, disease-free change over the life span
2) Secondary aging: developmental changes that are related to disease, lifestyle, and other
environmentally induced changes that are not inevitable
, 3) Tertiary aging: rapid losses that occur shortly before death
4) Chronological age: index variable that allows one to represent events in standard,
calendar time
5) Other ways to define age
(a) Perceived age
(b) Biological age
(c) Psychological age
(d) Sociocultural age
E) Core Issues in Development
1) Nature-Nurture Controversy: examines the extent to which hereditary (nature) and
environmental influences (nurture) determine who we are
2) Stability-Change Controversy: examines the degree to which people stay the same over
time or change over time
3) Continuity-Discontinuity Controversy: examines specific developmental tasks from the
perspective of being either a smooth evolution over time (continuity) or marked by
abrupt shifts (discontinuity)
4) Universal versus Context-Specific Controversy: is there one pathway (universal) of
development or several pathways (context-specific)?
III) RESEARCH METHODS
A) Measurement in Adult Development and Aging Research
1) Reliability: extent to which a measure provides a consistent index of the behavior or
topic of interest
2) Validity: extent to which a measure measures what researchers think it should measure
3) Systematic Observations: involves watching people and recording what they say or do
(a) There are two types of systematic observations
(i) Naturalistic observation: observing how people behave spontaneously in real-
life situations
(ii) Structured observations: done by creating a setting that is likely to elicit the
behavior of interest
, 4) Sampling Behavior with Tasks: creation of tasks when one can’t observe behavior
directly
5) Self-Reports: people’s answers to questions about a topic of interest
6) Representative Sampling: a subset of a population that is representative of the
population of interest
B) General Designs for Research
1) Experimental Design: systematic manipulation of a key factor (independent variable)
that the research believes is responsible for a behavior and observing its effects on one
or more other behaviors (dependent variables)
(a) Provides insight into cause-and-effect relationships and involves random
assignment of participants to experimental and control groups
2) Correlational Design: examines the relations among two or more variables as they exist
naturally
(a) Cause-and-effect relationships cannot be determined
3) Case Studies: systematic investigations of a single person that provide detailed
descriptions
C) Designs for Studying Development
1) Age, Cohort, and Time of Measurement
(a) Age effects: occur as a result of the underlying age-related changes in biological,
psychological, and sociocultural factors
(b) Cohort effects: differences caused by experiences and circumstances unique to the
generation to which one belongs
(c) Time-of-measurement effects: reflect differences in sociocultural, environmental,
historical, or other events at the time the data is obtained
2) Cross-sectional Designs: developmental differences are identified by comparing groups
of people varying in age at a single time
3) Longitudinal Designs: the same individuals are observed repeatedly at different points
in their lives
4) Sequential Designs: involve using more than one cross-sectional (cross-sequential) or
longitudinal (longitudinal-sequential) design simultaneously
