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Exploring Rural Ageing: Research Challenges & Perspectives

Learn about key issues in rural gerontology research, including social, economic, and demographic changes in rural areas. Discover research challenges and a shift towards environmental gerontology.

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Exploring Rural Ageing: Research Challenges & Perspectives

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  1. Rural ageing: a research challenge Thomas Scharf Director, Irish Centre for Social Gerontology, NUI Galway Rural Ageing Seminar, Age NI Belfast, 30 May 2013

  2. Environments of ageing • Space and place as major dimensions of research on ageing • ‘Classic’ studies in gerontology focus on urban and rural contexts: • Urban: e.g. Sheldon (1948), Townsend (1957), Rowles (1978) • Rural: e.g. Rosenmayr (1982), Cribier (1973), Wenger (1984)

  3. Environments of ageing: key issues • Rural gerontology part of a shift towards an ‘environmental gerontology’ with a focus on: • Understanding the key tasks facing older adults in diverse physical and ecological settings; • Exploring the impacts of globalisation on older people’s environmental experiences; • Addressing the policy and practice impacts of demographic change at a spatial level

  4. Why focus on rural ageing? • Considerable social, economic and demographic change within rural areas; • Changing local infrastructures; • Challenges associated with providing public services in changing rural contexts; • Ongoing weaknesses in the research evidence base for rural areas.

  5. Key research challenges • Coping with ‘rurality’ • Lack of generalisability • Nation-specific understandings of ‘the rural’ • Impacts of varying approaches to exploring rural issues • Comparing urban and rural environments • ‘Delay’ and ‘level’ hypotheses (Tews, 1987) • Limited value of urban-rural comparisons

  6. Towards a more critical perspective • Social divisions approach, identifying rural older people as a ‘minority’ within primarily urban societies • Exploring difference within and between different rural contexts (e.g. gender, social class, ethnicity, spatial dimensions) • Extending the ‘rural gerontological imagination’ (e.g. social inclusion/exclusion; methods)

  7. Rural Ageing Observatory at NUI Galway • Research leading to improved quality of life for rural dwellers • Participation of older people and relevant stakeholders in the research process • Key focus on forms of exclusion and inclusion relating to older people in rural areas • Life-course perspective • Policy/practice influence in relation to rural ageing

  8. Rural Ageing Observatory at NUI Galway

  9. Contact details thomas.scharf@nuigalway.ie

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