The study found that European-Americans perceived the physical mistreatment of older adults as more abusive than other forms of abuse, notably psychological abuse at the moderate level and neglect and psychological and verbal abuse at the mildly abusive level. This finding contrasts with Moon's finding (2000) that European-Americans rated psychological neglect (e.g., ignoring or isolating) as the worst behavior that could be perpetrated against an older adult. This apparent difference between the current findings and those of Moon may be due to methodological differences. Moon asked participants to judge the behavior of a hypothetical other; whereas, the current study asked respondents to give examples of extreme, moderate, and mild elder abuse. Perhaps when European-Americans are asked to envision what constitutes elder abuse, psychological neglect is not as likely as physical abuse to be the first type of abuse that comes to mind. Sexual and economic abuse were rarely mentioned. Regarding gender differences in perceptions of elder abuse, the only differences were found for neglect, with more examples of neglect given by females as forms of extreme, moderate, and mild abuse. The only response differences related to participants' age was that younger participants reported more instances of verbal abuse in their examples of mild abuse. The study involved 76 participants who ranged in age from 17 to 79. They completed an open-ended, qualitative survey that asked them to give examples of behaviors they considered to be extremely abusive, moderately abusive, and mildly abusive in the context of interaction between an adult child and an older adult parent. 1 table and 25 references