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Correspondence: Address correspondence to Hal Kendig, MP1, PhD, Professor and Dean, University of Sydney, Faculty of Health Sciences, Sydney, Australia. E-mail: H.Kendig{at}fhs.usyd.edu.au
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 TOP Abstract Environmental Gerontology at the...Conceptualizing Time and...Conducting Research on Home...SummaryReferences |
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The Forum also provides a welcome testimonial to the landmark contributions made by Powell Lawton. As one of countless personal stories about Powell, mine began while I was a graduate student at the USC Andrus Gerontology Center in the early 1970s. All of us in the Environmental Studies Laboratory at the time were captivated not only by his powerful environmental press (E-P) paradigm, but also by his friendliness, humility, and overwhelming commitment to older people. While showing us valuable ways of thinking, he demonstrated his conviction that the core of gerontology should be research-based knowledge for older people. At that time his research mainly concerned applications for vulnerable older people in public housing and poor neighborhoods. At the 1997 International Congress on Gerontology in Adelaide, 25 years later, he was just as animated discussing the injustices of QUALY economics methodology (because it devalued people with short life expectancies) and the usefulness of his new research instruments for measuring quality of life for older people with dementia in residential care. For Powell Lawton, who chose to work from the Philadelphia Geriatric Center throughout his pioneering research career, it was not possible to separate theory, methods, ethics, and practical value—and no important topic was too hard for him.
The articles in this forum build on Lawton's legacy and provide a valuable contrast of theory, methods, and professional applications in environmental gerontology. Wahl and Weissman (2003) provide a wide conceptual and historical sweep, building on the person–environment paradigm and its roots in psychology and geography. The Golant (2003) article develops fundamental issues of time and space as well as insights from anthropological and other qualitative perspectives. The Gitlin (2003) article reflects powerful new perspectives from a collaboration with health professionals who design and adapt home environments that can reinforce the independence and well-being of older individuals. This commentary concludes with some thoughts on the significance and gaps in current knowledge in environmental gerontology and related policy directions.
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Environmental Gerontology at the Beginning of the New Millennium |
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What does one make of the limited recognition of theory in environmental gerontology? To begin, one can only reinforce the authors' observation that the seminal work on environmental press, so clearly articulated by Lawton and Nahemow (1973), was rich with theoretical promise. However, this potential has remained largely unfulfilled because few empirical studies have rigorously explicated and tested E-P hypotheses as required to build a coherent body of knowledge. For example, where are the classic environmental studies comparable with Irving Rosow's (1967) Social Integration of the Aged? The disappointment is heightened because the fully developed E-P model, as per Parmelee and Lawton (1990), yields crucial insights into contemporary concerns. The model recognizes the dynamic interaction between individual action (not passivity) and environmental influences, and it has concern for higher outcomes such as well-being as well as lower level functioning. The practical value of these concepts is obvious, and the E-P focus on processes accords well with the prescripts of Bengtson and Schaie (1999) for the explanatory dimension of good theory.
Environmental perspectives have been valuable for theoretical development in related subdisciplines or fields, which may soften Wahl and Weisman's concerns. The increasing emphasis on "place"—within and across anthropological, psychological, and sociological theory—arguably reflects underlying strength rather than fragmentation of the environmental field. Having loose boundaries to environmental aspects of aging can facilitate the building of conceptual bridges across disciplines. Although the field has yet to evolve a suite of validated measures for key concepts, it may not be wise to have too many uniform indicators while there remains conceptual uncertainty and new substantive ground to be explored. For a field with a plurality of concepts and applications, there are some advantages in allowing a thousand flowers to blossom on the edges of established orthodoxies. Further, as the authors recognize, theory itself is under the critical gaze of postmodern relativism and few governments have been convinced of its social value in addressing practical problems. Yet notwithstanding these comments, one can only agree with the authors that ongoing theoretical synthesis and reflection, as demonstrated by their article here, is essential to critically assess developments in the field and focus research efforts on promising directions.
Finally, the Wahl and Weisman article provides valuable insights into the changing foci of research in environmental gerontology. They note that over the 1990s there has been an overall trend toward more publications (and presumably more research) on the private home environment; relatively less publication on the (previously dominant) institutional environment; and some growth, followed by a modest decline, of publications on residential decision making. To their observations I would underscore the astonishing paucity of research on the macroenvironments of neighborhoods, regions, and urban–rural divides that are so significant in structuring experiences of aging.
It is notable that research agendas in environmental gerontology had been influenced strongly by the U.S. national housing programs of the 1970s and 1980s but that this research subsequently waned along with the programs themselves. Although health and social research on aging was supported strongly by the National Institute on Aging during the 1990s, the Institute has provided relatively little support for environmental research. Research in environmental gerontology continues to reflect the tensions between its substantive origins in the architecture and planning professions and its theoretical impetus from psychology and geography.
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Conceptualizing Time and Behavior |
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Golant makes a convincing case for taking more account of time in environmental gerontology. He argues, correctly in my view, that present research in the field concentrates on a range of "snapshots" rather than the time sequences that better characterize people's lives. His theoretical logic, supported by reference to indicative studies, suggests that people's experiences of a current environment are influenced by the context and meaning of their past environments as well as by their anticipation of the future. Further, the same environmental features or changes can have either positive or negative impacts on different older individuals and their own sense of self. Indeed, the meaning and use of home can be inseparable from life continuity and identity. Finally, personal changes in the competencies and other characteristics of older people both influence and interact with environments and their consequences.
Why has there has been so little attention to time in environmental gerontology? This is surprising because aging itself must concern time, and life-span perspectives have been central to gerontology since the 1980s. Further, psychologists and anthropologists have long adopted life history approaches; demographers analyze housing "careers" and disablement processes; and geriatricians refer to trajectories of illness (acute, chronic, and acute on chronic). The answers may rest in the applied emphases and relative isolation of the environmental field—another argument for better integration through multidisciplinary theory and research. The difficulties of relating residential experiences to other life experiences do not appear to be methodological. For example, although residential careers are seldom included in life history or prospective surveys, they are not inherently more difficult to measure than are employment and family histories. When these opportunities are taken, the research opportunities can be substantial.
Golant also underscores the value of better understanding the environmental features that facilitate or impede the activities or behaviors of older people. Too few studies pay attention to the places in which older people live their daily lives. I particularly wish to emphasize the value of saliency, that is, the importance that particular environmental features may have for each older person and the reasons underlying these saliencies. Taxonomies of activities and settings are useful, as argued by Golant, but we need to remember that the early efforts by Barker (1968) and others became bogged down in description that did not yield much in the way of conceptual advances.
As a geographer, Golant would have a good understanding of macrostructural forces, but his article and environmental gerontology focus heavily on individuals and microenvironments. Although people's environments begin with their residences, they extend to neighborhoods, cities, regions, and other spatial units that are changing in their populations and built forms. For research on time and the environment, there are important macrodimensions to change, such as aging of the baby boom cohort in postwar suburbs. Broad socioeconomic–political change, which has been analyzed so productively through the powerful age–period–cohort paradigm in sociology, can set a larger context for understanding changes in the fit between older populations and their macroenvironments (Kendig, 1990).
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Conducting Research on Home Environments |
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This discursion into recent social and professional history leads naturally to Gitlin's analysis of the changing context for home environments. She emphasizes the increasing public recognition of home ownership and community living as the main and most beneficial settings for people growing older. There has been the fortunate and growing convergence of interests between governments wishing to limit care costs and older people wishing to age in place in their own homes. Although these points may seem self-evident now, they contrast sharply with the situation 30 years ago when research, practice, and public attention were devoted largely to the small minority of frail older people in congregate housing and residential care. Further spurs to recent growth of research on the home environment were recognition of environmental influences on the disablement processes, dementia care, and informal caregivers. These broader contextual issues may explain why the U.S. National Institute on Aging has concentrated its relatively small support for environmental research in areas that relate closely to home influences on maintaining older people's capacities and facilitating their care.
Gitlin sets out the major methodological challenges and benefits of research in the home. One of the greatest challenges is the variability of these settings and their uses as compared with the relative uniformity of institutional settings and routines. Qualitative research has shown that issues of meaning and control are very different for older people who live in somebody else's workplace (residential care) as compared to those in their own homes, where care workers are the visitors. Research on home hazards, home modifications, and use of aids are difficult but useful because they focus on the ways in which older people actively and dynamically relate to their environment. The theoretical and methodological scope extends to older people with a wider range of competencies, including the higher end, and a wider range of outcomes, including well-being as well as functioning.
The "problem" focus of the occupational therapist, such as on environmental influences on tasks of care and risks of falls, adds a sharpness of insight that complements Golant's general framework of relating tasks to places. Whereas Golant makes a theoretically based call for following activities through time, Gitlin specifically discusses videotapes of activities such as toileting and the remote measurement of activities and self-care behaviors at home. These bridges between theory, research, and practice are exceptionally important. Occupational therapy approaches begin and end their work in clinical and self-help applications. At the same time, this profession-based research benefits from and contributes to the theoretical and methodological work of environmental gerontology.
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Summary |
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Broader social trends and policy directions also can be influenced significantly by research on aging and environments. The social and political moves toward an "age-friendly" society, now prominent on the international stage, can be traced fairly directly back to international research showing environmental influences on aging experiences. The International Plan of Action on Ageing (United Nations, 2002) has confirmed "ensuring and enabling supportive environments" as one of the three major priority areas. The Research Agenda on Ageing for the 21st Century, produced by the United Nations Office on Ageing and the International Association of Gerontology (2002) for the Second World Assembly on Ageing, lists research priorities that address environmental determinants of healthy aging and quality of life. If governments, markets, and the public at large are well informed by good research, they can create and preserve environments that effectively and efficiently enable vulnerable older people to maintain their identity, independence, and well-being. Action on behalf of older people benefits greatly from a foundation of research-based knowledge and theory in environmental gerontology.
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1 Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Sydney, Australia.
Decision Editor: Laurence G. Branch, PhD
Received for publication May 22, 2002. Accepted for publication October 30, 2002.
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  G. C. Smith and G. M. Sylvestre Effects of Neighborhood and Individual Change on the Personal Outcomes of Recent Movers to Low-Income Senior Housing Research on Aging, September 1, 2008; 30(5): 592 - 617. [Abstract] [PDF]
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