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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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Environmental gerontology at the beginning of the new millennium
— reflections on its historical, empirical and theoretical development | | Author(s) | Hans-Werner Wahl, Gerald D Weisman |
| Journal title | The Gerontologist, vol 43, no 5, October 2003 |
| Pages | pp 616-627 |
| Source | http://www.geron.org |
| Keywords | Neighbourhoods, communities etc ; Amenities ; Architectural design ; Histories ; Social surveys ; Literature reviews. |
| Annotation | Environmental gerontology (EG) - focused on the description, explanation and modification or optimisation of the relation between older people and their spatial surroundings - has emerged as a subfield in its own right. This article reflects on the historical, empirical and theoretical development of recent EG, arising from Parmalee and Lawton's diagnosis from 1990 ("The design of special environment for the aged") that there is a need to move from the field beyond its current languishing state. From a historical perspective, EG has played and important and successful role within the gerontology enterprise in terms of explicit consideration of the sociophysical environment in theory and research. A literature analysis of empirical studies supports the view that research has continued on a substantial quantitative level during the 1990s. Findings of these research studies address the whole diversity of classic EG research questions, but mostly in the sense of replication and extension. In terms of theoretical discussion, the authors' analysis leads to an insight that EG may be described as a field high in conceptual aspiration ("world views") but low with regard to making research and application-productive use of its theoretical achievements. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-040504211 A |
| Classmark | RH: R8: YB3: 6A: 3F: 64A |
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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