Engaging Diverse Voices through Research & Resources

Age

“In everyday life, people are divided into age categories such as children, youth, adults, and seniors. Each of these groupings has its own schema of appropriate behavior or attributes and is associated with a corresponding set of social relationships with other people and with institutions like the education system, the labor market, and the state. The process of human aging involves passing through a sequence of age-based stages across the life span and socializing into implicit and explicit roles associated with each of these stages. ... To illustrate the complexity of the concept of aging, it is useful to differentiate between different types or meanings of age:

• Biological or physiological age refers to the physical aging of the human body.
• Chronological age represents the amount of time that has passed from the date of birth.
• Psychological age stands for age-related adaption capacities of an individual.
• Social age signifies norms, behavior, and attitudes conceived as appropriate for an age group.”

Click on the terms below to see related keywords.

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In many social and behavioral sciences databases, you will be able to narrow down your search to specific age groups.

PsycINFO: simply use the “Age Group” filter on the left sidebar that describes specific age groups related to the document’s content

• Childhood (birth to 12 yrs)
• Neonatal (birth to 1 mo)
• Infancy (2 to 23 mo)
• Preschool Age (2 to 5 yrs)
• School Age (6 to 12 yrs)
• Adolescence (13 to 17 yrs)
• Adulthood (18 yrs & older)
• Young Adulthood (19 to 29 yrs)
• Thirties (30 to 39 yrs)
• Middle Age (40 to 64 yrs)
• Aged (65 yrs & older)
• Very Old (85 yrs & older)

PubMed: Click additional filters to find the “Age” filter and narrow the results to a specific age category.