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).