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Elder research: filling an important gap in psychology and law
Author(s) -
Brank Eve M.
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
behavioral sciences and the law
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.649
H-Index - 74
eISSN - 1099-0798
pISSN - 0735-3936
DOI - 10.1002/bsl.780
Subject(s) - legal psychology , field (mathematics) , psychological research , focus (optics) , criminology , psychology , population , sociology , law , engineering ethics , political science , social psychology , engineering , physics , demography , mathematics , pure mathematics , optics
Abstract In the past few decades, psychology–law as a discipline has made great strides in understanding and guiding public policies on issues related to eyewitnesses, confessions, juries, judges, juveniles, the mentally ill, and many others. As a field, we have largely neglected the oldest subset of the population, with only a few scholars focusing specifically on elder issues or systematically including elders in their studies. The current article is a call to research. It first outlines why elders should be considered as a specific subset of the population even though they have not been an area of focus in the field. Second, the article provides suggestions for integrating elder issues into more common psychology–law research as well as some new areas for research. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.