Elder abuse: Expert and public perspectives on its meaning

The purpose of this study was to gain greater precision in the classificati on and definition of elder abuse by comparing the perspectives of the gener al public to that of a panel of elder mistreatment experts. Personal interv iews were conducted with 944 randomly selected adults using two scales deve loped from the expert's taxonomy and definition of elder abuse. Although th ere was a high degree of agreement between the public and the experts, ther e were also some areas of disagreement. These findings are the basis for th e refinement of the expert panel's taxonomy and definition of elder abuse.