November 7, 1983

The number of the ''oldest elderly'' - those at least 85 years of age - more than doubled in New York City in the last two decades, and city officials are finding new ways to help this dependent population. One successful effort has been an experiment by the City Planning Department and the Lutheran Medical Center in Brooklyn in which people who would otherwise have been kept in a hospital are returned home, where they are cared for by trained attendants. Other programs being tried to help those who are confined to their homes offer food (Meals on Wheels), companions or housekeepers. ''You have to tailor programs to meet specific needs,'' said Marvin D. Roth, director of human resources in the planning agency.

The control of the New Jersey Legislature will be at stake tomorrow in the most expensive off- year election in the state's history. The Democrats had narrow majorities of 21 to 19 in the Senate and 43 to 37 in the Assembly during the last session of the Legislature, and the Republicans are outspending the Democrats by more than 3 to 1 on the state and local levels as they try to gain the legislative leadership for the coming session. Reports filed with the State Election Law Enforcement Commission covering campaign finances through Oct. 30 showed the Republicans' statewide campaign committee had raised $2.2 million and the Democratic committee $885,984. In addition, about $4 million, much of it from political action committees, has been raised by the candidates themselves.

After more than two months of international crises, beginning with the Soviet downing of a Korean airliner on Sept. 1 and extending to last month's bombing of the Marine compound in Beirut and the invasion of Grenada, Secretary of State George P. Shultz has emerged as the paramount voice in the Reagan Administration's foreign policy. According to a wide range of key officials, Mr. Shultz and his top aides have become the strongest advocates in the Administration for using military force as an instrument of diplomacy in the Middle East and the Central American and Caribbean region, often in the face of what officials say have been Pentagon doubts or opposition. At the same time, officials said Mr. Shultz's ascendancy, along with the departure of William P. Clark as national security adviser and White House concern about President Reagan's vulnerabilities on foreign affairs in next year's election, was producing a steadier and less ideological foreign policy. 'A Common Thread' Underneath everything, most officials interviewed agreed, was the effect of the crises on the President himself. A senior official said, ''Grenada, Beirut and the K.A.L. airliner all served to confirm in the President's mind his own view of the world, that there was a common thread to all these events and it all led back to Moscow.''

News Analysis TOKYO, Nov. 6 - President Reagan's scheduled arrival here Wednesday for a three-day visit comes at a time when Japanese seem uncertain whether they are on good or bad terms with the United States. If they wished, Mr. Reagan and Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone could find plenty to talk about to make them mutually unhappy. Japan still does not spend enough on defense to satisfy many Americans, two-way trade is likely to produce a $23 billion deficit for the United States this year and continued high unemployment has left some Americans with the notion that the Japanese are responsible for many of their troubles. There is grousing, too, on this side of the Pacific, mostly out of conviction that every time something goes wrong in the United States, Japan is made a scapegoat. The sense that this country tends to be picked on unfairly is sufficiently engrained for a new word to have cropped up in some circles here: ''goatability.'' It is used only partly in jest.

Richard P. Cooley, chairman, president and chief executive officer of the Seafirst Corporation, wears a pin on his lapel that says: Expect Excellence. The gold-colored plastic pin is part of Mr. Cooley's campaign to whip the troubled banking company back into shape, improve internal morale and rebuild public confidence. ''Although a lot of customers have been asking for the pins, they're only for our staff,'' said Mr. Cooley. But a few blocks away, G. Robert Truex Jr., chairman of the Rainier Bancorporation and Mr. Cooley's arch competitor, wears one of Seafirst's pins on his lapel.