| |
Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
 | |
|
The meaning of healthy and not healthy
— older African Americans and Whites with chronic illness | | Author(s) | Myma Silverman, Susan Smola, Donald Musa |
| Journal title | Journal of Cross-Cultural Gerontology, vol 15, no 2, 2000 |
| Pages | pp 139-156 |
| Keywords | White people ; Black African ; Chronic illness ; Health [elderly] ; Ill health ; Qualitative Studies ; United States of America. |
| Annotation | Qualitative interviews with 114 older African Americans and Whites with chronic illness were conducted to assess whether or not they thought of themselves as healthy and the meanings associated with that assessment. The first and most frequently assigned attribute of healthy was the presence of functional capacities, for not healthy it was the presence of medical conditions or physical symptoms. While both ethnic groups responded similarly regarding the assessment, African Americans described health attributes somewhat differently to Whites. Also, both groups reported more varied meanings to the concept of "healthy" than to "not healthy", suggesting that "healthy" may be a multidimensional construct more connected to one's total life experiences than "not healthy". Thus, social and cultural factors such as race, ethnicity or health experiences may influence how individuals perceive and describe their health and the processes used in making these assessments. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-001026209 A |
| Classmark | TKA: TKF: CI: CC: CH: 3DP: 7T |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
|
| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
| |
|