Scale-checking styles on the semantic differential among older people

Two groups of older (60 plus) respondents, matched on age but differing in educational level, and a group of young university undergraduates were compared for scale-checking styles on the Semantic Differential. Subjects rated six concepts pertaining to stages of life on 27 pairs of bipolar adjectives. Although the three groups did not differ in frequency of endorsing extreme scale positions, the less well-educated older group showed a greater tendency to use fewer intermediate scale positions and more neutral midpoint positions than either the undergraduates or the group of retired professors emeriti. Data were interpreted as a propensity for older people to emphasize concrete, well-anchored scale positions in making ambiguous multiple-point scale discriminations, a tendency related to educational background but not to age per se.