Chronological age is something most people have never heard of and most people never use. It is vitally important to teachers and other professionals who are involved in the assessment of individuals. Teachers of education should be especially concerned with chronological age as it relates to students in the school system. Students are tested for a variety of reasons, including basic educational tasks, or simply to allow teachers to feel better about the ways in which they work in school.
So what is chronological age? Chronological age is simply the exact age of a person up to a certain date. More on these in a bit. Chronological age is important in assessment, because it allows education professionals to use the information they gain from testing and convert it into different types of scores that are used for placement of educational or career guides. Now let’s see how chronological age is calculated.
It is quite easy to do the chronological age once a few times. It is best to learn by looking at examples or questions about chronological age. Let’s look at the first question.
If John was born on October 12, 1987 and was probated on August 5, 1999, what is his chronological age on the date of probate?
This is the formula: Year Month Day (Test Date) – Year Month Day (Birth Date) = Chronological Age
Now let’s use the above formula for the first question.
1999 August 5 (Testes Date) – 1987 X 12 (Date of Birth) = 11 years, 81 months, 23 days (see explanation below)
Here is how you should look at this if you are working on the above question on paper.
1999 8 5
– 1987 10 12
After you put it on paper, it’s a simple deduction with a few key differences. Since 12 cannot be subtracted from 5 we are going to have a loan. Pay attention. We are going to borrow from the column of the month, making 8 a 7. But when you borrow from the column of the month, you are really borrowing for a month, or 30 days. You will add 30 days to 5 days, which we already have 35 minus 12. In this way we will have 23 days.
Now we have 7 minus 10 in the month column so we are going to have to borrow from the years column. We actually take the entire loan year (12 months) from 1999 to 1998. We add 12 months to the 7 we have in the months column, and subtract 19 from 10. So we get 9 months. Finally, in the years column we now have 1998 minus 1987, giving us 11 years.
After all is said and done, the above question is to be seen.
1998 19 35
-1987 10 12
11 09 23
Now let’s do one more thing to make sure everyone understands this concept.
If Janie was born on May 6, 1996, and was tested on July 8, 2007, what was her chronological age on the test date?
We set up the problem according to the formula given above.
2007 7 8
– 1996 5 5
This is the sum, because nothing is borrowed or borrowed. The real subtraction is simple.
The final answer is 11 years, 2 months, 3 days. 2007 – 1996 = 11 years. 7 (July) minus 5 (Months) = 2 months. 8 – 5 = 3 days
You must now calculate the chronological age.
