To determine whether Reid and Ziegler's Desired Control Measure assesses locus of control of reinforcement 363 community-residing elderly individuals completed: (a) the Desired Control Measure (DCM); (b) Levenson's Internal (I), Powerful Other (PO), and Chance (C) Locus of Control Scales; (c) the Life Satisfaction Index – Form A; and (d) the Affect Balance Scale. Support for construing the DCM as an index of locus of control was not obtained: (a) DCM scores correlated only modestly with the I, PO, and C scales; (b) factor solutions indicated minimal item overlap on the two measures; and (c) regression analyses indicated that the DCM added substantially to the variance in adjustment measures accounted for by I, PO, and C. We conclude that the DCM does not primarily tap locus of control, and is more appropriately conceptualized as an index of individuals' perceptions/evaluations of their environment.

Data from longitudinal studies have a number of advantages for gerontological research, but the effects of attrition and the increased complexity of data structures with multiple observations may pose some problems for statistical analysis. Proportional hazards models allow for the examination of event histories using all observations of a dependent variable, and these models can incorporate time-dependent covariates to increase their explanatory power. The assumptions and applications of event history analysis using proportional hazards models are described, and the analysis of mortality data from the Ontario Longitudinal Study of Aging provides a relevant example. Extensions of proportional hazards models and commercially available software are also discussed.

The goal of this meta-analysis was to provide an estimation of the average effect of aging on intentional memory for spatial location in small-scale space. Findings from 22 studies, which represent the testing of 1,598 subjects, were compared using the following statistics: (a) d (Cohen, 1988), (b) omega2 (Hays, 1963), and (c) Proportion of classified subjects. The meta-analysis suggests that the effect of aging is “large” (e.g., the average d was 0.81), and that it is proportional to the number of dimensions of the array used. However, these conclusions have to be treated with caution because of some methodological limitations of the reviewed literature. In particular, less than half of the studies mentioned (a) control for differences often found between young and elderly adults in visual acuity, and (b) having used a test phase of fixed duration. It is recommended that future research on age-related deficits in spatial memory take into account these confounds.

Age-related changes in the capacity for cognitive flexibility should be considered in social planning for the expanding elderly population and in the functional assessment of the individual geriatric patient. Current means for assessing conceptual flexibility are not particularly appropriate for use with the elderly. In the current study, a briefer and more tolerable measure of conceptual flexibility was derived from the Visual Verbal Test (VVT). This index correlated significantly with the number of perseverative errors but not the number of nonperseverative errors on the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST), attesting to its validity as a specific measure of the ability to shift mental set. A significant relationship between age and both this VVT measure of conceptual shift and the number of perseverative errors on the WCST was observed in a sample of 60 healthy elderly volunteers between the ages of 55 and 84, suggesting that cognitive flexibility is indeed negatively associated with age.

This paper reviews the different concepts and measures of positive aspects of caregiving that have been used in previous studies. It describes the use of a simple measure of “enjoyable aspects of caregiving” used in a large longitudinal Canadian study of dementia care in the community. The measure attained significant test-retest reliability and significantly correlated with caregiver burden and health. It also predicted caregiver desire to institutionalize the care recipient at three different time periods but not actual institutionalization. The paper calls for greater use of measures related to positive aspects of caregiving and a better understanding of how these measures relate to one another and to outcomes.

The French language imposes an additional difficulty for gerontological research: the lack of research on valid and reliable instruments of measurement in the French language. The translation into French of instruments already developed and validated in English is an interesting solution to this problem, since it offers the opportunity of profiting from previous research and allows for international comparisons. However, translation must follow strict rules to ensure that psychometric properties of the instrument have not been altered. A consensus workshop concluded that the following steps were needed in translating from English an instrument for gerontological research: (1) selection of the most valid and reliable instrument in English; (2) translation into French and back again into English; (3) review of the translated versions by a committee; (4) pretest; (5) test-retest (and if indicated inter-rater) reliability study. An inventory of all translated instruments showed that very few instruments fulfil these basic rules. This inventory is a useful tool for researchers and will stimulate research on measurement instruments and encourage publication of its results.

The main questions raised in this work are related to the different answers which various highly industrialized countries gave when responding to situations arising from common elements such as the rapid aging of the populations in the said countries, the noticeable increase in the proportion of public spending committed to the aging population and the tendency for people to retire early from the job market. Nine chapters deal with the situation as it stands in different countries, while five others cover the main themes while comparing a few of the countries concerned. Despite a few weaknesses, overall this book merits careful reading, since most of the chapters it contains discuss at length the evolution of aging policies over the past 30 years while providing extremely stimulating interpretations and hypotheses.

This volume published in 1991 contains the contributions of specialists in the field of geriatric psychiatry who met in 1989 to discuss the state of knowledge on the pathology of anxiety in the elderly. Written from a medical perspective, it contains 16 relatively short chapters divided into five sections which cover topics related to diagnosis, epidemiology, comorbidity, neurobiology, pharmacology, and pharmacological and psychotherapeutical treatments. The major weaknesses of the book reside in its atheoretical stance and its exclusive medical focus. We learn very little on the phenomenology and etiology of anxiety in the elderly, and on therapeutic interventions other than anxiolytics. Still it may be worth reading simply because there is such a derth of literature on anxiety in the elderly. Readers interested in the psychological research on this topic may consult the additional references cited.