The brevity, strong psychometric properties, and ability to discriminate DSM-IV cases from non-cases make the K10 and K6 attractive for use in general-purpose health surveys. The scales are already being used in annual government health surveys in the US and Canada as well as in the WHO World Mental Health Surveys. Routine inclusion of either the K10 or K6 in clinical studies would create an important, and heretofore missing, crosswalk between community and clinical epidemiology.

Data are reported on a series of short-form (SF) screening scales of DSM-III-R psychiatric disorders developed from the World Health Organization's Composite International Diagnostic Interview (CIDI). A multi-step procedure was used to generate CIDI-SF screening scales for each of eight DSM disorders from the US National Comorbidity Survey (NCS). This procedure began with the subsample of respondents who endorsed the CIDI diagnostic stem question for a given disorder and then used a series of stepwise regression analyses to select a subset of screening questions to maximize reproduction of the full CIDI diagnosis. A small number of screening questions, between three and eight for each disorder

The effect of age on happiness, as defined by positive and negative affect, was examined in a survey of 2,727 persons of a broad age range (25-74) conducted by the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Successful Midlife Development. The age-affect association was examined, controlling for a host of sociodemographic, personality, and contextual influences. Among women, age was related to positive affect nonlineariy but was unrelated to negative affect. Among men, age interacted with 2 key variables in predicting affect: extraversion and marital status. These findings lend support to recent life span theories of emotion and indicate that personality, contextual, and sociodemographic variables, as well as their interactions, are all needed to fully understand the age-affect relationship. People differ in their level of happiness, also known as wellbeing. For many years, social scientists have attempted to explain these differences. In many of the early, classic studies

Recent longitudinal and cross-sectional aging research has shown that personality traits continue to change in adulthood. In this article, we review the evidence for mean-level change in personality traits, as well as for individual differences in change across the life span. In terms of mean-level change, people show increased selfconfidence, warmth, self-control, and emotional stability with age. These changes predominate in young adulthood (age 20-40). Moreover, meanlevel change in personality traits occurs in middle and old age, showing that personality traits can change at any age. In terms of individual differences in personality change, people demonstrate unique patterns of development at all stages of the life course, and these patterns appear to be the result of specific life experiences that pertain to a person's stage of life.Keywords personality development; personality traits; mean-level change; individual differences in change Personality traits are defined as the relatively enduring patterns of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that distinguish individuals from one another. Whether personality traits continue to develop in adulthood depends in part on how one defines "relatively enduring." In the past, some researchers took that phrase to mean-and the empirical literature to indicatethat personality traits stopped changing in adulthood (McCrae & Costa, 1994). Since 1994, cross-sectional and longitudinal studies of personality-trait change in adulthood have forced a reevaluation of the assumption that personality traits do not change in adulthood (e.g., Mroczek & Spiro, 2003;Roberts, Walton, & Viechtbauer, 2006;Srivastava, John, Gosling, & Potter, 2003). Research now shows that personality traits continue to change in adulthood and often into old age, and that these changes may be quite substantial and consequential. In this article, we provide an overview of the evidence for personality-trait change in adulthood and outline some of the possible reasons for these changes. Before we discuss these findings further, we describe what we mean by change. DEFINITIONS OF PERSONALITY CONTINUITY AND CHANGEResearchers often fail to clarify what they mean when they describe personality as consistent or changeable. Part of the difficulty arises from the multiple indices for tracking continuity and change-such as mean-level change, rank-order consistency (relative ordering of people over time), structural consistency (e.g., similar factor structures over time), and individual differences in change. A complete understanding of personality continuity and change can only come from a thorough examination of multiple indices, as they are often independent of

The current study examined whether stress reactivity becomes stronger or weaker with age. Daily stress and daily negative affect were modeled using 1,012 subjects from the National Study of Daily Events (NSDE), an 8-day daily diary study. Age ranged from 25 to 74. Data were modeled using within-person HLM techniques. Daily stress and neuroticism interacted in their effect on daily negative affect. There was a stronger association between daily stress and negative affect for persons high in neuroticism as compared to those low on the trait. In addition, daily stress and age interacted in their effect on daily negative affect. There was a stronger association between daily stress and negative affect for older as compared to younger adults. Results suggest heightened reactivity to stressors in older adulthood, perhaps due to kindling effects. Changes in the aging brain may explain this effect. Our investigations illuminate the complexities that characterize the set of associations among negative affect, stress, personality, and age, and point to potential aging or cohort effects.

Change in life satisfaction was modeled over a 22-year period in 1,927 men. A curvilinear relationship emerged. Growth-curve models indicated that life satisfaction peaked at age 65 and then declined, but showed significant individual differences in rate of change. Extraversion predicted variability in change, with higher levels associated with a high and flat life satisfaction trajectory. Time-varying physical health and marital status were associated with higher life satisfaction. Proximity to death was associated with a decline in life satisfaction. On measurement occasions that were within 1 year before death, trajectories showed steeper decline, and this effect was not attributable to declines in self-rated physical health. The findings are at odds with prior (cross-sectional) research showing that subjective well-being improves with aging.

To advance an intraindividual life-span approach to the issue of stability and change, we studied personality trait trajectories in adulthood. Growth curves for extraversion and neuroticism were estimated for over 1600 men (initially aged 43-91) in the Normative Aging Study, who were followed over 12 years. We found significant individual differences in intraindividual change for both traits, as well as different trajectories for extraversion and neuroticism. The overall extraversion trajectory was best defined by a linear model, but neuroticism was characterized by quadratic decline with age. We then considered several variables as predictors of individual differences around these overall trajectories. Birth cohort, marriage or remarriage, death of spouse, and memory complaints were all significant predictors, explaining variability in both level and rate of personality trait change. These findings suggest that there is a good deal of variability in personality trajectories, and that some of this variability can be explained by birth cohort as well as by age-graded life events.

Findings demonstrate that a full understanding of the link between personality and health requires consideration of trait change as well as trait level.