How aging affects self-reports

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 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.