This article uses a qualitative, ethnographic approach to examine the experiences of older adults and their kin, as the older adult engages in relocation. Studies looking at caregiving by kin for older adults highlight burdens for the adult child. This study offers a life course perspective on kinship care, analyzing older adults' decisions to move. It was found that many older adults are strongly influenced by the desire to not be solely cared for by their kin, as well as to select housing near their existing social network, which might exclude kin. In conclusion, policy implications are discussed.
Abstract Visual methods, like photovoice and photo-elicitation, have attracted modest attention in gerontological inquiry with diverse and vulnerable community-dwelling older adults. Visual methods are based on the idea of inserting images, produced by informants or not, into research interviews, allowing informants to be the experts of knowledge and meaning-making while the researcher becomes the student. The empowerment of informants as subject-collaborators in the research process is a distinctive feature of visual methods. Benefits include revealing unique insights into diverse phenomena by evoking elements of human consciousness, feelings, and memories that words may not easily express and surveys may not easily capture. This symposium presents qualitative research using visual methods to illuminate the lived experiences, voices, and perspectives of diverse and vulnerable older adults living in New Jersey, Connecticut, and California. Reyes’ research critiques how the operationalization of mainstream notions of civic participation becomes exclusionary and provides a more inclusive understanding of how civic participation is enacted and performed through the practices of Latinx and African American older adults living in New Jersey. Versey’s research with homeless older adults subverts the attention often focused within cities by interrogating the meaning of place with informants whose needs and desires are often overlooked or obscured by residing in a small, rural town in central Connecticut. Yeh’s research on aging in place inequalities chronicles the everyday lives of housed and unhoused older San Franciscans to reveal their tactics for negotiating a moving tension between the daily interiority of identity and contingencies of a changing environment. Qualitative Research Interest Group Sponsored Symposium.
This article describes the role of social workers in addressing the needs of people with heart failure. Although previous studies have explored the role of social workers in health care settings, few studies have addressed the challenges of specific chronic diseases such as heart failure. To address this gap in the literature, this study used qualitative interviews with health care social workers (n = 8) to obtain in-depth information about activities and challenges related to heart failure care. Findings suggest that health care social workers perceive heart failure as characterized by an uncertain illness trajectory, frequent hospitalizations, and difficulties accessing formal and informal care. These findings suggest the importance of what we term illness-informed social work, a practice that combines heart failure knowledge with social work competencies to address the complex psychosocial issues in heart failure care.
While secondary data analysis of quantitative data has become commonplace and encouraged across disciplines, the practice of secondary data analysis with qualitative data has met more criticism and concerns regarding potential methodological and ethical problems. Though commentary about qualitative secondary data analysis has increased, little is known about the current state of qualitative secondary data analysis or how researchers are conducting secondary data analysis with qualitative data. This critical interpretive synthesis examined research articles (n = 71) published between 2006 and 2016 that involved qualitative secondary data analysis and assessed the context, purpose, and methodologies that were reported. Implications of findings are discussed, with particular focus on recommended guidelines and best practices of conducting qualitative secondary data analysis.
This chapter considers Detroit as one of the first American cities where the COVID-19 virus arrived. It discusses the ways in which the pandemic has impacted seniors in Detroit. It also chronicles the ways in which the Senior Housing Preservation–Detroit (SHP-D) coalition and other organizations worked with residents to provide essential services for their community. The chapter highlights the voices of older Detroiters to describe the city's senior housing context, reflect on Detroit's history of housing struggle, and advocate for the continued need for housing solutions for all ages. It details how seniors developed ways to cope with health challenges in a city where many have had to contend with disparities in health care, sporadic employment histories, and racist hiring, and lending practices.
Summary Interdisciplinary contributions to social work have supported the profession’s development as a helping profession. Indeed, drawing from other disciplines has been a way to hone intervention approaches. This article analyzes the history of social work’s use of anthropological theory about “culture” in order to critically examine the profession’s positioning as a “recipient” of theories. At a time when evidence-based practice is a dominant ideal, this paper offers an opportunity to step back and interrogate a key concept, culture, that is often evoked as interventions are tailored for various populations. Findings While social work has substantially debated and revised how it approaches culture difference, the core conceptualization of culture as a relatively static set of shared values and traits remains ill-suited to the complex negotiation of diversity in social work practice. The limitations of the culture concept are symptomatic of an exchange relationship with anthropology that positions social work practitioners primarily as recipients of concepts, rather than as interlocutors. Application By treating intervention as an opportunity for theory revision, anthropologists and social workers can better account for the hybridity, change, and contestation of difference in social work practice. As the social work profession expands globally, a more dialogical engagement with anthropological theories about culture and other key concepts may prove fruitful.
Abstract Black men across the lifespan are overburdened by poor health and underrepresented as participants in health research. The Flint Healthier Black Elders program seeks to engage more older Black men in research that could contribute to health discoveries by developing and testing strategies to recruit Black men into a community participant research pool (PRP). The PRP recruitment strategies account for the influence of gender role norms, mistrust derived from current and historical research and medical abuses, and other factors that affect older Black men’s willingness to participate in safe and ethical research. This initiative also focuses on building trust in research engagement by foregrounding the voices of local older men as community stakeholders and research gatekeepers, and tailoring multimedia recruitment materials to represent older Black men more fully and positively. Videos and print materials developed as recruitment tools specifically tailored to older Black men were pilot tested for messaging and impact, and the results of this community-driven process can serve as an innovative model for equitable and trustworthy research recruitment in Black communities. We would like to acknowledge the contributions of the Flint Healthier Black Elders Community Advisory Board: Yaushica Aubert, Rev. Dr. Sarah Bailey, E. Hill DeLoney, Luther Evans, Ella Greene-Moton, Cynthia Howell, Bishop Bernadel Jefferson, Beverly Lewis, Geraldine Redmond, Sharon Saddler, Arlene Sparks, Erica Thrash-Sall.
