The Everyday Ageism Scale: Development and Evaluation.

OBJECTIVES: Older adults regularly encounter age-based discrimination and stereotyping in their day-to-day lives. Whether this type of routine ageism negatively affects their health and well-being is unclear, in part due to the absence of validated scales that comprehensively measure this phenomenon and distinguish it from other sources of everyday discrimination.

METHODS: This study describes the development of a novel scale, the Everyday Ageism Scale, and its psychometric evaluation using a nationally representative sample of US adults age 50-80 from the December 2019 National Poll on Healthy Aging ( = 2012).

RESULTS: Exploratory factor analysis indicated a 3-factor structure comprised of ageist messages, ageism in interpersonal interactions, and internalized ageism. The ten-item scale was psychometrically sound and demonstrated good internal reliability.

DISCUSSION: Everyday ageism is a multidimensional construct. Preliminary evaluation of the Everyday Ageism Scale suggests its utility in future studies examining the prevalence of everyday ageism and its relationships with health.