Research Methods in Aging

Research Methods in Aging

• The lecture covers research methods used to study aging.
• Key terms are defined, including:
  • Cohort effects: Differences caused by experiences and circumstances unique to a generation.
  • Time of Measurement effects: Differences from sociocultural, environmental, historical, or other events at the time of testing.
  • Age effects: Differences caused by underlying processes such as biological changes.
  • Confounding effects: Factors or sets of factors that influence the outcome and which make it difficult to attribute the observed effect to the intended factor.

Types of Research Designs

• Cross-Sectional design: Studies people from different groups at the same time.
  • Low cost and easy to implement.
  • Primarily examines age differences, not age changes.
  • Major issue is cohort effects (differences due to factors affecting a generation).
• Longitudinal design: Studies the same group of people over time.
  • Expensive and difficult to manage.
  • Shows age changes and practice effects (improvement due to repeated testing).
  • Limited generalizability as only one cohort is studied.
• Sequential design: Studies multiple groups of people over time.
  • Combines longitudinal and cross-sectional designs.
  • Analyzes both age changes and age differences.
  • Expensive.
• Time-lag comparison design: Studies different groups of people at the same time point in their lifespan.

Other Key Points

• Experimental design: Scientists manipulate variables to study the influence on a dependent variable.
• Correlational study: Investigates relationships between variables.
• Case study: In-depth study of a single individual, group, or community.
• Meta-analysis: Combination of results from multiple studies to evaluate relations between variables.