Political Attitudes, Age, and Aging: A Cohort Analysis of Archival Data

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Abstract
This paper deals with a number of conceptual and methodological problems typically found in studies of politics and age, while answering when, under what circumstances, and for whom age is a significant variable in explaining a set of political attitudes.Archival data from the Roper Center were used.Resolutions to several kinds of problems encountered with these data and a methodology for cohort analysis are presented.Attitudes toward perceived political problems were analyzed at three levels of generality: the family, the community, and the national.Interpreting this sequence as moving from issues having more immediate or visible personal implications to issues considerably removed from an individual, we found that age has less effect on one's attitude as the issue becomes more removed from him. the specific effects found depend on the issue at hand and have complex interpretations.

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