168 A. T. Welford 



Conclusion on Methodological Problems 



It seems clear that many of the methodological problems 

 commonly supposed to attach to the study of human perform- 

 ance in relation to age are less serious than they are usually 

 believed to be. Difficulties arising from the brevity of labora- 

 tory experiments can be met by studies of work in industry. 

 Motivation among older subjects does not seem to be a serious 

 problem. The bewildering complexity of human capacity can, 

 at least to a considerable extent, be sorted out. Various 

 background factors affecting the comparability of subjects of 

 different ages can be controlled. 



On the other hand, it seems equally clear that no one way of 

 studying ageing is wholly free from methodological objections 

 and that we can thus seldom, if ever, draw certain conclusions 

 from a single experiment or industrial study. In view of this 

 it appears wiser to carry out several small-scale studies using 

 different methods rather than concentrate the whole research 

 effort on a few large-scale investigations. Even a study using 

 thousands of subjects recruited haphazardly would be at the 

 mercy of possible sampling errors. The use of a number of 

 small-scale studies each controlling different variables enables 

 us to gather on our way a great deal of valuable information 

 upon the effects of various background factors influencing age 

 trends, and although giving a mass of data which it may often 

 be difficult to integrate, holds the promise of the attainment of 

 results having a greater degree of generality. 



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