Older adult psychopathology: international comparisons of self-reports, collateral reports, and cross-informant agreement

ABSTRACTObjectives:To conduct international comparisons of self-reports, collateral reports, and cross-informant agreement regarding older adult psychopathology.Participants:We compared self-ratings of problems (e.g. I cry a lot) and personal strengths (e.g. I like to help others) for 10,686 adults aged 60–102 years from 19 societies and collateral ratings for 7,065 of these adults from 12 societies.Measurements:Data were obtained via the Older Adult Self-Report (OASR) and the Older Adult Behavior Checklist (OABCL; Achenbach et al., 2004).Results:Cronbach’s alphas were .76 (OASR) and .80 (OABCL) averaged across societies. Across societies, 27 of the 30 problem items with the highest mean ra…