Applied Fields: Gerontology

Introduction

Older adults and particularly those frequently described as the ‘oldest old’ (85+) represent the fastest growing population subgroup in most (industrialized) countries around the world. Although high competence characterizes the majority of today's elders (Lehr & Thomae, 2000), a whole gamut of critical situations related to ageing, and particularly to very old age, underscores the need for psychological assessment in older adults. Psychological assessment provides a rational, scientific means for making decisions in these situations, prototypical examples of which are residential decisions (e.g. relocation to an institution or within institutions), treatment decisions (e.g. early diagnosis of dementia coupled with a promising cognitive training intervention), or rehabilitation decisions (e.g. the estimation of an individual's rehabilitation potential and remaining plasticity).

In order to define the content of this article, we first draw from Lawton and Storandt (1984), who suggested a broad conception of assessment: ‘An attempt to evaluate the most important aspects of the behaviour, the objective, and the subjective worlds of the person […]’ (p. 258). Second, we argue for a theoretical framework to organize the different types of assessment and numerous instruments found in this rapidly evolving field of gerontology. Our suggestion is to roughly distinguish between three assessment approaches: (1) Person-oriented (P) assessment is aimed to address the older person's cognitive and behavioural competence, personality, and psychological aspects of health. (2) Environment-oriented (E) assessment addresses the social and the physical environment of the ageing person. (3) Finally, the assessment of PxE outcomes evaluates the impact of person-environment transactions on major domains of life quality such as subjective well-being, affect, and mental health. Below, we use this line of thinking to review psychological assessment in gerontology. The challenges of assessing older persons in terms of application and theoretical-methodological issues are discussed shortly thereafter. We end this entry with some general conclusions and the consideration of future perspectives.

Main Approaches in the Assessment of Older Persons and Their Environments

The following overview draws from both old and new treatments of the assessment of older adults (e.g. Kane & Kane, 2000; Lawton & Storandt, 1984; Lawton & Teresi, 1994). Due to space limitations, each theoretical domain is illustrated using a small number of prototypical instruments that essentially reflect the construct or family of constructs in question (see also Table 1).