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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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| Theory, explanation, and a third generation of theoretical development in social gerontology | | Author(s) | Vern L Bengtson, Elisabeth O Burgess, Tonya M Parrott |
| Journal title | The Journals of Gerontology Series B: Psychological sciences and social sciences, vol 52B, no 2, March 1997 |
| Pages | pp S72-S88 |
| Keywords | Ageing process ; Sociology, Social Science ; Theory ; Literature reviews ; United States of America ; United Kingdom. |
| Annotation | Efforts at cumulative knowledge building in social gerontology have been lax, judging from research articles published in US and UK journals between 1990 and 1994. Too little attention has been paid to the cumulative development of theory; readers are left with many empirical generalisations but underdeveloped explanations by which to interpret findings and build upon them in subsequent research. To assist future theory development in social gerontology, seven theoretical perspectives referenced most frequently in recent journals are reviewed: social constructionist; social exchange; life course; feminist; age stratification (age and society); political economy of ageing; and critical theory. The authors suggest that, taken together, these represent a "third generation" of explanation in social gerontology, noting their debt to older and more established traditions in social science theory. Authors and journal reviewers should place more emphasis on theory development if knowledge development about social aspects of ageing is to be cumulative, systematic, and incremental. (AKM). |
| Accession Number | CPA-971125243 A |
| Classmark | BG: S: 4D: 64A: 7T: 8 |
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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