Person-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. This study examined longitudinal data from their same sample, and tested 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 appropriate factors. As hypothesized, context-oriented measures showed less temporal stability than personoriented measures, and the temporal relationships among person-oriented measures were more easily explained in terms of a strict simplex structure than was the case for context-oriented measures. Perceptual age measures accounted for variance in self-ratings and manager's ratings of employee health, self-ratings of retirement intentions, and manager's ratings of promotability not accounted for by chronological age.