methodological issues with age studies
- Created by: BKW
- Created on: 20-05-19 16:39
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- methodological issues with distinguishing between healthy and pathological ageing
- why is it hard to study?
- Diagnostic criteria can change over time
- there is no specific cognitive decline threshold
- should we look at individual decline or compare elderly people to those of similar ages
- cognitive impairment can hide pathological conditions vice versa
- eg someone may have dementia but we blame it on just getting old
- old age extremely hard to separate from cog decline in advance - will never know
- biologically hard to distinguish between brain abnormality in normal ageing and alzheimers
- Longitudinal studies
- pros
- Identifies age related changes
- Unnaffected by cohort effects
- Cons
- drop outs
- expensive, complex & time consuming
- Practice effects
- time of measurement effects - eg stress, bereavement, exams ect at certain testing points
- pros
- cross sectional design
- pros
- identifies age group differences
- inexpensive, quick and simple to repeate
- Better replicability = reliability
- no time of measurement effects
- no practice effects
- cons
- cant age changes only age differences
- cohort effects
- pros
- sequential design
- All the pros of cross sectional and longitudinal design
- cons of the other 2, complex, expensive, time consuming
- why is it hard to study?
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