Normative ideas of age and stage-based transitions are built into policies and practices related to aging. However, how the issues of loss and depression impact older people's experiences of transition are often less prevalent. This paper discusses the sub-theme of loss identified within data from the Late Life Transitions Project; a SSHRC funded research project. In this thesis, qualitative interviews were analyzed from 30 community-residing seniors from diverse social backgrounds. Focused exploration of the everyday ways in which older people discussed major transitions and turning points revealed a strong subtheme of loss. Findings presented are related to the types of loss, the various barriers to integrating loss, coping mechanisms and the impact of social location on loss. Such discussions inform understandings of the ways in which older people discuss and make sense of their loss, and may provide guidance to plan interventions that are more relevant to older people's late life experiences.

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This study was designed to investigate influences on and content of communication between retirement housing providers and retirees who are their potential customers. This included communications: 1) prior to deciding on a retirement apartment, 2) the actual deciding process, and 3) postpurchase influences. Data gathered during the pre-decision stage indicated that the expectations of many seniors are influenced by various groups and individuals. The expectations formed are the basis for future communications with retirement communities. Second, the actual deciding process involved determining what "triggers" the seniors' decisions to begin shopping for retirement apartments. Third, the study focused on postpurchase influences which included communications with seniors who were apartment owners' or renters' regarding attitudes based on their experiences of living in retirement apartments. The research was conducted in two retirement communities, one was located in Florida and the other in Indiana. Information from the two retirement communities was compared and contrasted. The data indicate that each retirement community was unique in many ways. One important uniqueness was the values of the retirement community management organization. Seniors either found a particular retirement community attractive or unattractive based on how it fit their value systems. Seniors depend on person-to-person communication. Most tend to drawn conclusions about the retirement communities based on what they have learned about the retirement communities over a period of years. It was also learned that many seniors in the shopping process do a good amount of self-evaluation during the deciding process. Most seniors don't see clear differences between nursing homes and retirement communities which provide multiple levels of care when both are located on the same site. This makes the decision to move into a retirement apartment a more difficult one. Seniors miss many of the benefits of retirement apartment living because they wait until they are incapacitated in some way before moving into a retirement apartment. / Department of Educational Leadership

published_or_final_version / abstract / Social Work and Social Administration / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

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Orientador: Guita Grin Debert / Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Insituto de Filosofia e Ciencias Humanas / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-15T07:22:48Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Alcantara_AdrianadeOliveira_D.pdf: 1830987 bytes, checksum: 68df3abd480569d71d864a8e37a46562 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2010 / Resumo: A questão central desta pesquisa foi saber como as trocas intergeracionais de apoio familiar se configuravam em unidades domésticas, compostas de, pelo menos, três gerações, no meio rural e urbano, levando em conta a oposição cunhada por Camarano entre "família de idosos", em que o chefe da unidade doméstica é o idoso, e "família com idosos", em que o idoso é parente do chefe. Com base em etnografias realizadas em Fortaleza (CE) e no Distrito de Jordão (Sobral-CE), o trabalho aponta as singularidades do processo de envelhecimento nesses dois contextos. A descrição do cotidiano de tais famílias, dos significados atribuídos às relações entre gerações e do impacto das transformações acarretadas pelo direito à aposentadoria exige uma revisão de determinadas convenções, pois as experiências aqui trazidas revelam-se de tal modo heterogêneas, que bloqueiam a tentativa de padronizar seja a família, seja a velhice. / Abstract: The central question of this research was how the Intergeneration relations of family support is configured in households composed of at least three generations in country and urban areas, taking into account the opposition coined by Camarano and "family nursing" in which the head of household is elderly and "elderly family" in which the elderly is related to the head. Based on ethnographic studies conducted in Fortaleza (CE) and the District of Jordan (Sobral-CE), the study analyzes the singularities of the aging process in these two contexts. The description of the daily life of such families, the meanings attributed to the relations between generations and the impact of changes brought about by the retirement law requires a revision of certain agreements, since experiments show brought here is so heterogeneous, that block attempt standardize it's family, is old age. / Doutorado / Doutor em Antropologia Social

Differences in Mexican American ethnicity, family and friend social support, and importance of diabetes self-management as related to diabetes management in the older adult population were evaluated with the University of Michigan Health and Retirement Study (HRS) 2003 Diabetes Study. Comparisons were made between Mexican Americans with Type II diabetes and similar non-Hispanic Caucasian and African American individuals with Type II diabetes. Neither family/friend social support nor importance of diabetes self-management were significant predictors of HbA1c levels. Results did not support the idea that perception of receiving support from family/friends or placing importance on diabetes self-management covaried with lower HbAlc level (family/friend: beta = -.13, t = -1.47, p = .143; self management: beta = .08, t = .55, p = .584).

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