How aging affects self-reports

Abstract

A lot of information used in aging research relies on self-reports. Surveys or questionnaires are used to assess quality of life, attitudes toward aging, experiences of aging, subjective well-being, symptomatology, health behaviors, financial information, medication adherence, etc. Growing evidence suggests that older and younger respondents are differentially affected by questionnaire features and the cognitive tasks that question answering pose. This research has shown that age-related changes in cognitive and communicative functioning can lead to agerelated differences in self-reports that are erroneously interpreted as real age differences in attitudes and behaviors. The current review highlights how the processes underlying respondents' self-report change as a function of respondents' age; it updates our previous reviews of this literature.Keywords Aging Á Self-reports Á Surveys Á Questionnaires Á Questionnaire features Á Survey methodology A lot of information used in aging research relies on self-reports. Surveys or questionnaires are used to assess quality of life, attitudes toward aging, experiences of aging, subjective well-being, symptomatology, health behaviors, financial information, medication adherence, etc. Over the past 50 years, a strong body of research has uncovered many potential sources of response biases in surveys and has shown that apparently minor variations in question format, question order, or the position of response options can systematically bias responses and lead to false reports of attitudes and behaviors (for reviews see Schwarz 1999a; Sudman et al. 1996;Tourangeau et al. 2000;Abeele et al. 2013;Krosnick et al. 2006). Growing evidence suggests that older and younger respondents are differentially affected by questionnaire features (Schwarz et al. 1999;Yoon et al. 2010). This research has shown that age-related changes in cognitive and communicative functioning can lead to age-related differences in self-reports that are erroneously interpreted as real age differences in attitudes and behaviors. The current review highlights how the processes underlying respondents' self-report change as a function of respondents' age; it updates our previous reviews of this literature (Schwarz 2005;Schwarz et al. 1999;Schwarz and Knäuper 2000). Notably, this review concludes that age-related differences in question or response option comprehension and memory retrieval can lead to erroneous conclusions about age differences in opinions or behaviors. Yet, the examples identified over the last 20 years have not yet led to substantial changes in survey research that systematically address these problems. Also, the available research is still limited in quantity and quality, as detailed below.

Psychological stress declines rapidly from age 50 in the United States: Yet another well-being paradox

“…Another consideration that might explain the weak results for explanatory factors is that well-being and perceived stress may be biased by age-related differences in self-reporting, a concept that has recently been discussed [24,25]. Older age may affect self-reports, because age is associated with decreased memory capacity, differences in how questions are interpreted, less responsiveness to context effects, more difficulty with open-ended questions, and difficulty interpreting numeric response options (32).…”

Prevalence and associated factors of self-treatment behaviour among different elder subgroups in rural China: a cross-sectional study

“…Secondly, the questionnaires did not contain more details of the subjects' self-treatment behaviour, such as the specific form of self-treatment of each respondent, and the type of the medicine used in the self-treatment. Self-reported information may also lead to some reporting bias or recall bias because the majority of the respondents are elders [65]. In addition, the potential seasonal variation in healthy condition as well as in the health-seeking pattern is unavoidable, especially for the elders, which may limit the generalisability of the study.…”

Individual and Environmental Factors Associated with Recurrent Falls in Elderly Patients Hospitalized after Falls

“…It should be noted that we measured environmental factors by asking patients to subjectively evaluate their stair, floor, bathroom, and corridor conditions. In other studies, age significantly influences the way participants respond to self-reported questions due to the changes of cognitive and communicative functioning, as well as working memory capacity [36,37]. With cognitive decline, older people might face difficulties in recalling the conditions or behaviors mentioned in the questions [38,39], which leads to less accurate answers [40].…”