Aging over time: New methods, new possibilities

Reviews the book, Methodological Issues in Aging Research edited by Cindy S. Bergeman and Steven M. Boker (see record 2005-16049-000). In 1965, Schaie's general developmental model was presented in a seminal article to elevate the study of developmental changes with age above the simpler longitudinal or cross-sectional studies that were par for the time. Both simple designs had their methodological flaws, and Schaie offered a more generalized model to parse the effects of intraindividual age change from effects of cohort and historical times of measurement. The technique involved successive repeated and independent sampling of age cohorts for the duration of a longitudinal study. The resulting data then permitted various comparisons within and across age groups, within and across birth cohorts, and within and across times of measurement. The illustrative chapters of current methods for studying age change in Bergeman and Boker's Methodological Issues in Aging Research exemplify the quantum leap that developmental methods have taken in the last 40 years. Although the conceptual issues persist, the newer methods for analyzing change might not have been imagined in those earlier years. The book can potentially attract many readers--psychometricians who are knowledgeable about one or more of the complex methods and are seeking new areas of application, university teachers who want to find examples of research with these cutting edge methods in a single volume, or aging researchers who want to understand these methods better and savor them more than is possible with a technical journal article, given its page limitations and poignant scientific focus. Most chapters summarize their methodological approach in a comprehensible fashion (that assumes a basic understanding); describe their data source; and illustrate how theory translates to model, how method translates data to model, and then how results are graphically displayed and conceptually reported. For graduate students or scientists new to the area, the chapter content is a great tool for learning how the methods work from start to finish. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved)