Pascoe, Catherine (2010) A Study of Age Appropriate Category Norms for Australians. Honours thesis, University of Southern Queensland. (Unpublished)
Abstract
Category normative data have been used in research and diagnosis since 1957 when Cohen, Bousfield and Whitmarsh produced the first category normative data. This spurred numerous other researchers to produce their own sets of category normative data for use in different cultural settings and with different participants and clients, however all currently available data are out-of date, as the last major study was conducted over 20 years ago. The current study aims to produce a set of up-to-date category normative data for the Australian population that distinguish between categories which are sensitive to differences between the age groups of Young (18-39 year olds), Middle Aged (40- 59 year olds) and Old (60 – 80 year olds), and those categories which are not sensitive to differences in age. Participants in this study were 165 Australians aged between 18 and 80 years old (49% male, 51% female) who were family or friends of either the experimenters or previous psychology students. These voluntary participants were required to verbally respond with an instance of a category which was read aloud to them by the experimenter. The participants had 10 seconds to respond before the next category was read aloud and this process was repeated for each of the 150 or 156 categories (depending on whether they received the first set of questionnaires or the second set of questionnaires). The participant’s responses were written down by the experimenter and the resulting data were collated by four researchers involved in a broader study. The data were divided into the three age groups previously mentioned, and a Chi –Squared Test of Independence was calculated for each category using the top four responses from each age group, in order to identify if responses from the different age groups were significantly independent of each other. Of the 149 categories used for this study, 70 were identified as significantly independent between the three age groups at p < .05 (Cramer’s V ranged from .19 to .47). In an attempt to identify a pattern for distinguishing between categories which would or would not be significantly different for the age groups, the categories were compared on expected set size, actual set size and “recency” of category (e.g. AUDIO VISUAL EQUIPMENT, DATA STORAGE DEVICE and similar categories are relatively modern category labels not used in previous studies). This investigation found no obvious characteristics that differentiated between significant and non significant categories. These results indicate that although some category responses do not vary significantly between the age groups, there are categories for which the responses vary quite significantly, and caution should be taken when using these categories for research and clinical assessment.
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| Item Type: | Thesis (Non-Research) (Honours) |
|---|---|
| Item Status: | Live Archive |
| Additional Information: | Current UniSQ staff and students can request access to this thesis. Please email research.repository@unisq.edu.au with a subject line of SEAR thesis request and provide: Name of the thesis requested and Your name and UniSQ email address |
| Faculty/School / Institute/Centre: | Historic - Faculty of Sciences - Department of Psychology (Up to 30 Jun 2013) |
| Supervisors: | Hendry, Liam |
| Qualification: | Bachelor of Science (Honours) (Psychology) |
| Date Deposited: | 16 Mar 2026 01:29 |
| Last Modified: | 16 Mar 2026 01:29 |
| Fields of Research (2008): | 17 Psychology and Cognitive Sciences > 1799 Other Psychology and Cognitive Sciences > 179999 Psychology and Cognitive Sciences not elsewhere classified |
| Fields of Research (2020): | 52 PSYCHOLOGY > 5299 Other psychology > 529999 Other psychology not elsewhere classified |
| URI: | https://sear.unisq.edu.au/id/eprint/52654 |
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