Looking back and looking ahead as journal of gerontology: psychological sciences turns 65.

3 L IFE-SPAN developmental psychologists and gerontolo-gists know age is more a convenient marker of developmental progress and maturity than a cause of developmental change per se. At the same time, they readily acknowledge the infl uence of interactions between persons and larger environments. Such an interaction occurs in many societies when a person turns 65 years of age and both the person and others construe that birthday as a gateway to the " later life " phase of the life span. When I applied to edit this journal, I noticed that managing submissions for volume 65 would be part of my responsibilities. Given the social meaning of age 65 years, it seemed appropriate to recognize this particular milestone in a journal devoted to research on psychological processes of aging. Psychologists who study aging sometimes focus on the benefi ts of life review. In keeping with the notion that looking back can be a useful way of gaining insights for the future , Nicole Sanford and I undertook a review of the 437 articles published in Journal of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences (JG: PS) from 2000 to 2008 (M = 48.6 articles per year, R = 32 – 60) as a partial assessment of recent trends in this fi eld. As shown in Table 1 , we identifi ed eight broad topic areas addressed by these manuscripts; the dominant topic among the primary foci was aspects of cognitive functioning (40%), followed by other topics such as well-being, health, and personality with much lower frequencies. About 41% of the reports incorporated a secondary topic and about 6% included a tertiary one; health was the most common accompanying focus. We found 400 empirical studies and 37 review essays or commentaries. Among the 400 data-based reports, 99.7% employed quantitative methods, with data collected by questionnaires (n = 158, 39.5%), assessments of task performance (n = 109, 27.3%), face-to-face interviews (n = 73, 18.3%), results of an experiment (n = 40, 10%), or telephone interviews (n = 11, 2.8%). Cross-sectional designs dominated (n = 256, 64%), whereas longitudinal designs were presented less often (n = 138, 34.5%). Data were collected most typically from one state in the United States (n = 146, 36.5%) or came from international sources (n =137, 34. Topic Primary Secondary Tertiary Total n % n % n % n % Cognition 175 40.0 28 6.4 2 0. sented among these reports. …