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Older post-Soviet immigrants in the U.S. have been largely overlooked by research despite their unique experience of having lived in a totalitarian regime until middle age, only to find their lives profoundly altered after its fall. Our qualitative study examined the experiences and caregiving expectations of 16 older post-Soviet immigrant women (mean age = 74.5 years, SD =5.8) through in-depth, face-to-face interviews. Data analysis revealed four themes: broken family ties, happiness in the little things that money can buy, intergenerational comparison, and a nursing home is not an option. Overall, our findings emphasize immigration as an important life course event, with profound implications to one’s social position, familial ties, employment opportunities contributes to a deeper understanding of how historical context shapes the aging experiences and intergenerational relationships.

Although many large Chinese cities have begun to implement hospice services, hospice care is still a relatively new concept in many parts of the country, especially in smaller cities. The purpose of this study was to gain a better understanding of health care providers’ (physicians and nurses) perceptions of the facilitators and barriers to hospice care implementation in a fourth-tier city. Using a qualitative descriptive approach, semi-structured, open-ended interviews were conducted with 15 health care providers. Two major categories for developing hospice care were identified: (a) prospective facilitators and (b) perceived barriers. In addition, there is currently much ambiguity regarding what agency should oversee hospice services if implemented, who should be responsible for payment, the importance of developing interdisciplinary care teams and concerns about worker shortages. Future research is encouraged to investigate attitudes towards hospice care across various local healthcare systems and to promote the development of local hospice care support.

What is meant by narrative?How can one elicit a narrative or analyze it in research?How can narrative work best be facilitated among older adults?This is the only text to provide comprehensive information about the applications of narrative approaches in community and long-term settings, writing in the virtual world, and such individual work as.

Abstract Creativity offers liberation from the framework of decline in later life in general, and within the context of dementia specifically. Cohen described the synergy of hope and expectation as ways through which people access their creative potential, especially in the face of loss. This paper explores three case drawn from a qualitative study. Eight residents living in a secure dementia care facility participated in six 30-minute interactive poetry sessions using guidelines from the Alzheimer’s Poetry Project (APP). Observations were conducted at baseline, during the intervention, and one week afterwards. All sessions were audio recorded, transcribed and analysed. Important findings included the positive potential of imagined futures, creative engagement as a tool for building social bonds, and the importance of language play. Overall, these findings point to new ways to consider success in dementia interventions by focusing on the potential to create meaningful and creative engagement opportunities.

Ageism has been recognized as a global problem leading to poorer health, isolation, and workplace discrimination toward people based on their age. Consequently, there are several tools that measure levels and types of ageism with a focus on the quantification of degrees and types of ageism. While such quantification is valuable, this paper describes the development of an inventory, created over four stages, designed to foster introspective and collaborative thinking about age-directed values. In Stage 1, 34 items were identified through a comprehensive literature review. In Stage 2, the items were evaluated and revised via a focus group discussion. In Stage 3, the revised ASI was administered to a representative U.S. sample (N = 513). Based on factor and conceptual analysis, a revised version was tested on a second sample (N = 507) (Stage 4) and again revised. The final ASI consists of 35 age-related statements: 22 psychometrically linked to one of four domains, six related to identity, and seven that, although not aligned with statistical results, are conceptually important. Rather than provide an ageism score, the ASI is a tool for introspection and reflection about individual values and judgements about age which can lead to customized strategies to address potential age biases.

Abstract Although recruiting persons with dementia into research is challenging enough, finding those who live-alone in the community is even more difficult. Consequently, live-alone persons with dementia are often overlooked and/or deliberately excluded from inquiry despite calls for more inclusive approaches to dementia research. Based on enrollment strategies from an interview-based protocol recruiting 120 live-alone persons with dementia, our National Institute on Aging- funded study identified five domains of gatekeepers imperative to gaining access to community-dwelling, live-alone persons with dementia: 1) housing (e.g., service coordinators), 2) data proprietors (e.g., regulatory specialists), 3) institutional (e.g., review boards), 4) kin (including fictive kin), 5) clinical (e.g., medical providers, clinician practices). In addition, gatekeeper domains are multilayered and serve distinct roles in both facilitating and hindering access to and enrollment of this under-researched vulnerable population. Analysis of our recruitment efforts contribute significant insights into how the dementia research community may engage the various domains of community gatekeepers, providing direction for current and future social science research.

Narrative gerontology considers how people age biographically as well as socially and biologically. Vulnerability as a process category and state of being remains undertheorized in the context of narratives of later life. It is argued that the narrative space for stories from old age privilege backward-looking stories that focus on positive milestones and support cultural narratives of a “life well lived.” Sad, emotionally laden or uncertain/unfinished stories that reveal vulnerabilities are rejected and potentially viewed as problematic. Using an illustrative case example of a study of resilience narratives and aging, this paper considers how the study authors position and identify resilience. Some interpretative judgements used in the research regarding who is resilient based on expressions of vulnerability are highlighted. Overall, the tensions between cultural and personal narratives that position older people as vulnerable subjects are considered and it is argued that vulnerability can be a great source of strength and meaning in later life.

I am a social gerontologist, broadly defined as a social scientist who studies how later life is experienced, structured, and controlled in a society and in social settings. Although gerontology is often confused with geriatrics (a medical specialty), gerontologists are typically not clinicians but may study issues related to old age and health care such as the societal conditions that shape how medical care is provided and financed and how early exposure to education relates to later life health. In this essay, I argue that thinking like a gerontologist is important when considering what makes a good life in late life. To think like a gerontologist is to consider the cultural and societal values—past and present—that shape the experience of aging, to recognize people as complex beings whose individual lives do not follow predictable patterns or easily identified trajectories, and to recognize our own habits of regarding older persons as “other” and the consequences of “othering” for older persons and social systems. After a brief history of gerontology, highlighting a few core concepts that gerontologists share, I propose three important questions to consider regarding a good life in late life.

Abstract While anocriticism is a feminist framework often applied in the context of literary gerontology, this paper uses an anocriticism approach to consider how hegemonic masculinities and old age reveal a separation between cultural stereotypes of age and chronological age. Narratives from 5 men aged 65 and over, who participated in a qualitative study on everyday attributions of depression, were analyzed using an anocriticism framework. Results revealed that participants both claimed and contested their chronological age as an identity marker. Of particular note were claims related to the stereotype of loss of vigor in later life, with each man making a clear point to affirm his virility and sexual prowess independent of other interview questions. Overall, findings point to an important way to read interview data through an anocritical lens, paying particular attention to ways that power are questions and performed in relation to age.

Abstract Narrative gerontology emerged as a concept in the 1990s to describe the ways that people age biographical as well as biologically. Since then, narratives and narrative approaches have gained popularity as methods and ways of knowing. This paper presents findings from a qualitative evidence synthesis (QES) of narrative within the gerontological literature. ). QES describes methods to systematically review qualitative evidence (e.g., extracted text). The purpose is to gain a deeper understanding of a concept rather than evaluate study designs or findings. An initial search returned 1,480 papers. Upon further analysis, the following three large categories with regards to narrative were identified: definitions, accounts, processes, and possibilities. Overall, findings provide an comprehensive overview of uses of narrative within gerontology.