PERSON-ORIENTED AND CONTEXT-ORIENTED PERCEPTUAL AGE MEASURES - ADDITIONAL EVIDENCE OF DISTINCTIVENESS AND USEFULNESS

Cleveland and Shore (1992) suggested that four perceptual age measures could be grouped into person-oriented and context-oriented factors. T his study examined longitudinal data from their same sample, and teste d three propositions related to the distinctiveness and usefulness of the age measures. Confirmatory factor analyses showed that the factor structure proposed by Cleveland and Shore was invariant over time, and that new multi-item scales measuring two types of age loaded on appro priate factors, As hypothesized, context-oriented measures showed less temporal stability than person-oriented measures, and the temporal re lationships among person-oriented measures were more easily explained in terms of a strict simplex structure than was the case for context-o riented measures. Perceptual age measures accounted for variance in se lf-ratings and managers' ratings of employee health, self-ratings of r etirement intentions, and managers' ratings of promotability not accou nted for by chronological age. (C) 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.