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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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The effect of widowhood on older adults' social participation
— an evaluation of activity, disengagement and continuity theories | | Author(s) | Rebecca L Utz, Deborah Carr, Randolph Nesse |
| Journal title | The Gerontologist, vol 42, no 4, August 2002 |
| Pages | pp 522-533 |
| Keywords | Widows ; Widowers ; Bereavement ; Social interaction ; Participation ; Longitudinal surveys ; United States of America. |
| Annotation | Using data from the Changing Lives in Older Couples (CLOC) study in Detroit, Michigan, analyses compared widowed people to continuously married control participants to evaluate whether widowhood affects older people's level of social participation. Widowed people were found to have higher levels of informal social participation than non-widowed people, whereas formal social participation levels were comparable between the two groups. Social participation levels decrease before the death of a spouse, primarily because of poor health, and increases following the loss, because of increased support from friends and relatives. Thus, maintaining continuity in the realm of social participation is a strategy older people use to cope with the loss of a spouse. However, not all widowed people have the same resources to alter their levels of social participation. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-021021209 A |
| Classmark | SP: SPA: DW: TMA: TMB: 3J: 7T |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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