The Anxiety about Aging Scale (AAS)<\/strong> is a multidimensional psychometric instrument developed by Kathleen Patterson Lasher and Patricia J. Faulkender (1987, 1993) to assess subjective fears, anxieties, and emotional concerns regarding one’s own aging process as well as attitudes toward older adults. Spanning 20 self-report items evaluated on a Likert response format ranging from strongly disagree<\/em> to strongly agree<\/em>, the AAS conceptualizes aging anxiety not as a monolithic apprehension of mortality, but as an intricate, multifaceted affective and cognitive construct. The instrument evaluates four correlated primary dimensions: (a) Fear of Old People<\/strong>, which gauges personal discomfort, avoidance, and negative affective reactions when interacting with elderly individuals; (b) Psychological Concerns<\/strong>, which measures distress over personal fulfillment, loss of life satisfaction, meaninglessness, and subjective well-being in late adulthood; (c) Physical Appearance<\/strong>, which captures preoccupations with somatic alterations, visible signs of aging (such as wrinkles and gray hair), and changing bodily aesthetics; and (d) Fear of Loss<\/strong>, which examines apprehensions concerning the depletion of social networks, autonomy, health, and decision-making independence.<\/p>\n Psychometric evaluations across diverse collegiate, community, and professional clinical cohorts demonstrate sound reliability and structural validity. Initial and subsequent validation studies report an overall internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha) coefficient typically hovering between .82 and .84, with individual subscale reliabilities ranging from .65 to .83. Confirmatory and exploratory factor analyses consistently support the four-factor oblique model over unidimensional alternatives, demonstrating robust convergent validity with generalized trait anxiety, death anxiety, and ageist attitudes, alongside satisfactory discriminant validity against unrelated affective states. By providing a nuanced structural assessment of aging anxiety across adulthood, the AAS serves as a foundational instrument in gerontology<\/a>, developmental psychology, medical sociology, and healthcare education, identifying specific psychological vulnerabilities that may impede successful developmental adaptation or foster discriminatory healthcare attitudes.<\/p>\n Anxiety about Aging Scale, AAS, aging anxiety, gerontology, fear of aging, developmental psychology, psychometrics, ageism, physical appearance, psychological concerns, fear of loss, fear of old people.<\/p>\n The Anxiety about Aging Scale was originally formulated and empirically validated by:<\/p>\n Inquiries regarding historic dissertation archives and foundational psychometric documentation can be accessed through institutional repositories, including the University of Southern Mississippi Aquila Digital Community and academic publishing archives.<\/p>\n The primary purpose of the Anxiety about Aging Scale (AAS) is to provide an empirically grounded, multidimensional measurement tool capable of identifying, differentiating, and quantifying specific affective and cognitive anxieties individuals harbor regarding the prospect of growing old. Prior to the development of the AAS, early gerontological research frequently conflated anxiety about aging with generalized death anxiety (thanatophobia<\/a>) or reduced it to explicit, stereotypic ageism directed toward contemporary older generations. Lasher and Faulkender recognized that while individuals may harbor existential dread surrounding finitude, the process of living into old age involves distinct psychosocial, interpersonal, somatic, and cognitive vulnerabilities that warrant independent operationalization.<\/p>\n From a theoretical and developmental perspective, the AAS clarifies how individuals negotiate anticipatory transitions across the adult lifespan. Aging is not merely a biological milestone but a protracted developmental trajectory marked by physical changes, role transitions, shifts in autonomy, and altered social networks. By distinguishing between anxiety directed outward (e.g., discomfort around aged peers) and anxiety directed inward (e.g., fears of somatic decline, cognitive dependence, or personal loss of purpose), the AAS allows developmental researchers to map age-graded trajectories of aging anxiety across young adulthood, middle age, and late maturity.<\/p>\n In applied and clinical settings, the AAS fulfills multiple diagnostic, educational, and intervention-oriented functions:<\/p>\n The Anxiety about Aging Scale measures aging anxiety<\/em>, defined conceptually as an anticipatory state of apprehension, tension, or dread concerning the physical, mental, psychological, or social changes associated with personal growing older and interacting with older adults. Rather than operating as a singular trait, the construct is organized into four distinct but intercorrelated dimensions:<\/p>\n This dimension reflects an individual’s emotional and behavioral discomfort, avoidance, and interpersonal reticence in the presence of older adults. It assesses social contact anxiety and relational distance. Individuals scoring high on this dimension report feeling uncomfortable, awkward, or resistant toward engaging in conversations, visits, or activities with aged individuals. Representative items include “I enjoy being around old people”<\/em> (reverse scored), “I like to go visit my older relatives”<\/em> (reverse scored), and “I feel very comfortable when I am around an old person”<\/em> (reverse scored). Elevated scores signify latent ageist aversion and social avoidance, often functioning as an ego-protective mechanism against encountering visual reminders of one’s own eventual frailty.<\/p>\n This subscale captures existential and affective anxieties regarding personal happiness, life satisfaction, cognitive well-being, and personal fulfillment in later life. It evaluates catastrophic beliefs about whether late adulthood is inherently devoid of joy, meaning, and subjective vitality. Individuals exhibiting high levels of psychological aging anxiety anticipate that old age will inevitably bring despair, boredom, emotional stagnation, and an inability to maintain life goals. Key items reflecting this construct include “I fear it will be very hard for me to find contentment in old age,”<\/em> “I expect to feel good about life when I am old”<\/em> (reverse scored), and “I am afraid that there will be no meaning in life when I am old.”<\/em><\/p>\n This somatic and aesthetic dimension measures distress, vigilance, and cognitive preoccupation with visible markers of biological aging. Within modern cultural milieus that emphasize youthfulness, physical signs of senescence (such as dermatological wrinkles, graying hair, postural alterations, and declining physical vigor) frequently evoke substantial body-image distress and loss of social capital. Items in this domain assess the degree to which an individual fears, dreads, or attempts to mask phenotypic changes: “I have never lied about my age in order to appear younger”<\/em> (reverse scored), “I have never dreaded the day I would look in the mirror and see gray hairs”<\/em> (reverse scored), and “When I look in the mirror, it bothers me to see how my looks have changed with age.”<\/em><\/p>\n The Fear of Loss dimension operationalizes apprehension regarding the depletion of tangible functional capacities, personal agency, health, social connections, and self-determination. It taps into anxieties regarding infirmity, chronic illness, social isolation, institutionalization, and the loss of independent decision-making. Prominent items measuring this facet include “I fear that when I am old all my friends will be gone,”<\/em> “The older I become, the more I worry about my health,”<\/em> “I get nervous when I think about someone else making decisions for me when I am old,”<\/em> and “I worry that people will ignore me when I am old.”<\/em> High scores indicate profound dread over dependency, marginalization, and the erosion of autonomy.<\/p>\n The theoretical framework of the Anxiety about Aging Scale synthesizes lifespan developmental psychology, psychosocial stage theory, social comparison theory, and terror management dynamics:<\/p>\n The conceptual foundation of the AAS aligns closely with Erik Erikson’s<\/a> theory of psychosocial development, particularly the final two stages: Generativity vs. Stagnation<\/em> (middle adulthood) and Integrity vs. Despair<\/em> (late adulthood). Erikson posited that successful aging requires individuals to integrate their personal life history, reconcile physical and social losses, and achieve ego integrity. When an individual anticipates that late adulthood will inevitably culminate in despair, isolation, and meaninglessness, aging anxiety manifests. The Psychological Concerns<\/em> subscale directly operationalizes the fear of falling into Eriksonian despair.<\/p>\n According to Terror Management Theory<\/a> (Greenberg, Pyszczynski, & Solomon), human beings manage the paralyzing terror of their own mortality by adhering to cultural worldviews and striving for self-esteem. Older adults serve as salient, visible reminders of physical vulnerability, bodily decay, and inevitable death. Consequently, younger and middle-aged adults often exhibit defensive reactions when confronted with elderly individuals or somatic signs of aging. The Fear of Old People<\/em> and Physical Appearance<\/em> subscales capture these defensive psychological responses, showing how individuals project death anxiety and existential distress onto the outward markers of senescence.<\/p>\n Sociocultural theories of age stratification and internalized ageism suggest that cultural stereotypes depicting older adults as incompetent, dependent, and socially invisible become internalized across the lifespan. Individuals continuously assimilate cultural messages that equate youth with worth, competence, and physical attractiveness. When people project these external biases onto their own projected future selves, they experience intense fear of functional loss and appearance-related anxiety. The AAS captures the bidirectional nature of this dynamic by evaluating both externalized attitudes toward older individuals and internalized dread regarding the personal aging process.<\/p>\n Extensive psychometric investigations have established robust validity profiles for the Anxiety about Aging Scale across multiple cultural, educational, and demographic groups:<\/p>\n Lasher and Faulkender (1993) initially established construct validity by conducting exploratory factor analyses on a large normative adult sample ranging in age from late teens to older adults. The data yielded four distinct factors that accounted for a substantial proportion of the total variance, confirming that aging anxiety cannot be adequately modeled as a unidimensional construct. Subsequent structural equation modeling and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) across international samples (e.g., Poorsattar Bejeh Mir & Poorsattar Bejeh Mir, 2014; Wisdom, 2010) have confirmed that the four-factor correlated model achieves acceptable fit indices (e.g., CFI > .90, RMSEA < .06, SRMR < .07), significantly outperforming one-factor and two-factor models<\/span>.<\/p>\n The AAS demonstrates significant, theoretically congruent correlations with established psychometric inventories:<\/p>\n Discriminant validity is supported by modest to non-significant correlations with constructs unrelated to developmental senescence, such as academic aptitude, generalized social desirability, and situational state anxiety ($r < .15$<\/span>). Furthermore, while the AAS correlates moderately with generalized anxiety, factor analyses incorporating both STAI and AAS items demonstrate that AAS items load distinctly on separate developmental factors, demonstrating that aging anxiety is not merely a manifestation of generalized psychological distress.<\/p>\n The Anxiety about Aging Scale exhibits solid, consistent reliability estimates across exploratory and confirmatory investigations:<\/p>\n In the foundational psychometric publication by Lasher and Faulkender (1993), the overall 20-item instrument demonstrated an aggregate Cronbach’s alpha of $\\alpha = .82$<\/span>, indicating high internal consistency without excessive item redundancy. Subscale internal consistencies were reported as follows:<\/p>\n Replication studies across diverse samples have reported comparable or superior coefficients. In Wisdom’s (2010) investigation on age discrimination, the total scale alpha reached $.84$<\/span>, while Poorsattar Bejeh Mir and Poorsattar Bejeh Mir (2014) reported an overall reliability coefficient of $.81$<\/span> among healthcare students. Across translated adaptations (e.g., Turkish, Spanish, and Persian versions), composite internal consistency values consistently range from $.80$<\/span> to $.86$<\/span>.<\/p>\n Temporal stability evaluations conducted across intervals of two to four weeks yield test-retest correlation coefficients ranging from $r = .76$<\/span> to $r = .85$<\/span> for the total scale, confirming that the AAS captures stable cognitive-affective trait dispositions rather than fluctuating situational emotions. Subscale test-retest reliabilities also remain within acceptable bounds ($r = .70$<\/span> to $.81$<\/span>).<\/p>\n The structural composition of the AAS was derived through rigorous factor analytic methods. Lasher and Faulkender (1993) initially formulated an extensive item pool reflecting diverse manifestations of aging anxiety. Following item-total correlation screening and preliminary pilot testing, exploratory factor analysis (EFA) utilizing principal axis factoring with oblique (Promax\/Oblimin) rotation was executed, acknowledging that dimensions of personal anxiety naturally intercorrelate.<\/p>\n The EFA yielded an interpretable four-factor solution with eigenvalues greater than 1.0, accounting for approximately 45.8% to 52.3% of the total variance across validation cohorts. Items demonstrated primary factor loadings ranging from $.42$<\/span> to $.78$<\/span> onto their designated constructs, with minimal cross-loadings (defined as secondary loadings < .30)<\/span>:<\/p>\n Subsequent psychometric examinations employing confirmatory factor analysis (e.g., Wisdom, 2010; Poorsattar Bejeh Mir & Poorsattar Bejeh Mir, 2014) evaluated the empirical fit of the established four-factor structure against competing models (e.g., single-factor general aging anxiety; two-factor personal vs. interpersonal anxiety). The four-factor oblique model demonstrated superior goodness-of-fit indices across diverse adult cohorts:<\/p>\n The Anxiety about Aging Scale is a standardized, self-administered psychometric questionnaire. Below is a structured summary of its technical parameters, administration format, and scoring procedures:<\/p>\n The Anxiety about Aging Scale was developed by Kathleen Patterson Lasher as part of her doctoral dissertation completed in 1987<\/strong> at the University of Southern Mississippi, and formally published in peer-reviewed literature with Patricia J. Faulkender in 1993<\/strong> in the International Journal of Aging and Human Development<\/em>.<\/p>\n Response Scale: (strongly disagree) to (strongly agree)<\/p>\n The Anxiety about Aging Scale (AAS), developed by Lasher and Faulkender (1993), is a 20-item multidimensional assessment measuring Fear of Old People, Psychological Concerns, Physical Appearance, and Fear of Loss with demonstrated reliability and construct validity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","categories":[1110,20169,30],"tags":[18617,15657,20190,20189,1168,20191,193,6],"class_list":["post-6467","psych_scale","type-psych_scale","status-publish","hentry","category-anxiety-measures","category-gerontology-assessments","category-psychological-scales","tag-aas","tag-ageism","tag-aging-anxiety","tag-anxiety-about-aging-scale","tag-developmental-psychology","tag-fear-of-aging","tag-gerontology","tag-psychometrics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ashadocs.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/psych_scale\/6467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ashadocs.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/psych_scale"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ashadocs.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/psych_scale"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ashadocs.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ashadocs.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6467"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ashadocs.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/psych_scale\/6467\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ashadocs.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ashadocs.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ashadocs.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}2. Keywords<\/h2>\n
3. Authors<\/h2>\n
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4. Purpose<\/h2>\n
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5. Psychological Construct<\/h2>\n
1. Fear of Old People<\/h3>\n
2. Psychological Concerns<\/h3>\n
3. Physical Appearance<\/h3>\n
4. Fear of Loss<\/h3>\n
6. Theoretical Framework<\/h2>\n
Eriksonian Psychosocial Development<\/h3>\n
Terror Management Theory (TMT) and Mortality Salience<\/h3>\n
Attributional and Sociocultural Perspectives<\/h3>\n
7. Validity<\/h2>\n
Construct and Factorial Validity<\/h3>\n
Convergent Validity<\/h3>\n
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Discriminant Validity<\/h3>\n
8. Reliability<\/h2>\n
Internal Consistency<\/h3>\n
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Test-Retest Stability<\/h3>\n
9. Factor Analysis<\/h2>\n
Exploratory Factor Analysis Findings<\/h3>\n
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Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) Fit Indices<\/h3>\n
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10. Instrument \/ Measurement Tool<\/h2>\n
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11. Permissions & Fee and Test Year<\/h2>\n
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12. References<\/h2>\n
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13. Items of the Scale<\/h2>\n
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