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The text aims at describing spatial distribution of people aged 60+ in Poland between 1991-2011 and showing correlation between aging of society and fertility. The analysis revels that in those regions of Poland where the number of people aged 60+ is highest, the fertility rate is lowest, however important differences between regions and in time were observed. Therefore no common and unvarying pattern was observed.
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The paper is based on surveys conducted among elderly people (65+) living in Białystok. Its aim is to analyze the current situation and changes that have occurred in the area of social activity of seniors over the last twenty years. It is shown that elderly people who are healthy and educated individuals, with sufficient material security and, in general, satisfied with life are more active. It also occurs that women participate more often in social activities than men; the same applies to seniors from the younger age cohorts.
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Changes in the family in recent years have contributed more and more frequently to grandparents taking over roles related to caring for grandchildren. Therefore, it becomes important to look for an answer to the question about factors determining the nature of the relationship between grandchildren and grandparents – parents. The purpose of this paper is to present research results showing the relationship between grandchildren and grandparents – parents and the role that the eldest family members played, in the opinion of grandchildren, in their lives.
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The knowledge about seniors’ experiences resulting from being a great-grandmother or a great-grandfather is still relatively small. In the presented paper, the author has attempted to fill this gap, at least in part, based on the study of the individual experiences of an elderly person. The objective of the study was to recognize and understand the experiences and reflections of an individual performing the role of great-grandmother.
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We analyse labour market prospects of unemployed Czechs and Slovaks aged 50 – 65. Those aged 55 and over face the most diminished opportunities for re-employment and the strongest incentives to withdraw from the labour force. Women and individuals in poor health also fall into strongly disadvantaged/ discouraged subcategories. Education levels or regional economic conditions do not significantly affect the re-employment odds. While these trends are similar in both countries, older Czechs face a lower probability of remaining unemployed, due to more frequent use of labour force withdrawals as an exit from unemployment. More frequent withdrawals occur in all subcategories of older unemployed Czechs, and can be observed after any comparable unemployment duration. The probability of re-employment of older Czechs and Slovaks is equivalent early in an unemployment spell, but becomes higher for older Slovaks after the fifth month of unemployment, even for those aged 60+. We suspect that the higher pensionable age in the Czech Republic is unlikely to function as a strong push factor to return to employment. We also point to the shorter duration of unemployment benefits for older Slovaks, which may encourage more job-finding effort.
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Social exclusion is a multidimensional phenomenon, difficult to define and measure unambiguously. Elderly and disabled people belong to the category of people benefiting from social assistance; they are often excluded or are at risk of social exclusion. The basic institution that helps these people is a social welfare center whose aim is to support the social life of the excluded. The article will discuss selected non-cash benefits for the elderly and the disabled on the example of the Municipal Social Welfare Center in Krakow.
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This study assesses the relationship between psychological well-being and life attitudes among older adults, while also providing a psychological analysis of life review questionnaires of 148 participants over 60 years of age (99 female). Quantitative research was conducted by means of Reker’s Life Attitudes Profile (LAP) and the Scales of Psychological Well-Being (PWB) by Ryff and Singer. The results confirmed the hypothesis that psychological well-being and life attitudes are positively correlated. Qualitative data were gathered by means of Life Review Interview (LRI). Self-narratives of senior citizens (n = 70), both older adults (60–69) and the elderly (70–101), revealed the predominance of topics related to life values, attitudes toward life and death, and changes during the course of life. Participants who assessed their life positively in LRI obtained higher scores in Environmental Mastery and Personal Growth than participants who assessed their life negatively or ambivalently; no differences were observed in life attitudes between these two groups.
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The ageing of the society is a serious factor affecting the prospects of urban development. Unfavourable demographic changes disturb the functioning of the urban system, thus forcing adaptive activities leading to a new state of balance in the organism of a city. The ageing of urban society requires a new look at the organisation of space in the city. The importance of planning age‑friendly cities is rising fast. Due to the low mobility of the elderly, it is important to plan their direct living environment, ensuring access to facilities or areas that meet the basic needs of this particular group of urban space users. As part of the answer to the question: to what extent the cities of Poznań and Łódź are resilient to the ageing process in spatial terms, an analysis was performed of the accessibility of green areas, sports and recreation facilities, service and commercial, cultural, healthcare facilities and public transport stops for the elderly population. This resulted in the delimitation of problem areas characterised by functional and spatial deficits and the development of the two cities’ resilience indexes to demographic changes, namely, ageing in spatial terms.
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This study aimed to understand what activities could be done by older Indonesian who are physically sick and how those activities can make them feel happy. It was a qualitative study conducted in the Surakarta, Central Java, Indonesia. A total of 6 older people aged >60 years and suffering from the chronic disease were selected for this study. The data were collected by an in-depth interview. The data were analyzed using thematic analysis with the help of the NVivo 12 QSR program. Older people with chronic disease were still able to be active in worship, socializing with the surrounding environment, working, doing the daily chores, and doing older people gymnastic. The benefit of staying engaged in the activity, including the ability to feel happy, be motivated to get a reward, exchange ideas, and share experience, help others, be calm, and have good health. This study emphasized the importance of being engaged in activities for older people to achieve happiness even though there had poor health status.
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Review of: Dominika Jagielska - ADAM A. ZYCH, LEKSYKON GERONTOLOGII, KRAKÓW: OFICYNA WYDAWNICZA „IMPULS”, 2019, SS. 282, ISBN
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Introduction: Analgesic effect of total and local cryotherapy in people older than 55 years, in respondents with various diagnoses, most often with degenerative diseases. Especially with gonarthrosis, coxarthrosis, spondylosis, osteoarthritis and polyarthrosis. Objective: The aim of the survey was to process information from the field of total and local cryotherapy and to analyze the information obtained using questionnaires. We process the percentage effect of total and local cryotherapy on the intensity of painful symptoms, feeling, tolerance and satisfaction of respondents after completing ten therapies. Methodology: The group of respondents consisted of 35 men and 65 women aged 55 to 81 years. A total of 100 respondents qualified for the survey. 50 % of respondents participated in total cryotherapy and 50 % of respondents participated in local cryotherapy. Results: We processed the results using MS Excel and IBM SPSS. The Laitinen Modified Pain Questionnaire was used. Due to established hypotheses and the nature of the data, we used the Kolmogorov-Smirnov normality test, the nonparametric Mann-Whitney U-test and the Wilcoxon nonparametric paired test. The results show that with the help of local and total cryotherapy, the intensity of painful symptoms is lower. Conclusion: The performed analysis of the data by means of a questionnaire showed that local and total cryotherapy alleviates pain and has an analgesic effect.
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This paper is based on a methodological study with which we tested and adapted the tool for measuring Gerotranscendence in Slovenia. The original scale with 25 items was developed by Lars Tornstam, PhD. First, the scale was translated into Slovenian and adapted to the cultural setting. This translation was pre-tested with 14 cognitive interviews. The results showed that nine items were problematic. The aim of this paper is to point out important differences in the understanding of these nine items and suggest more appropriate translations on the basis of the cognitive interviews. While describing the process, the paper illustrates the significance of pre-testing survey questionnaires.
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One of the most dynamically developing areas of our time is the provision of pensioners within the social sector. In my publication I would like to outline the possibilities of the elderly requiring institutional service. After that, I focus on exploring the relationship between opportunities and demand. With my manuscript, I would like to assist professionals actively involved in the submission and evaluation of applications.
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The article presents results of the study of self-representation by two religious organizations in Saint Petersburg, Russia, that provide long-term elderly care. The main aim of the research is to reconstruct how faith-based organizations represent, or position, themselves in the conditions of expansion of the market of nonstate social services in Russia. The study was conducted within the qualitative paradigm of social research and used frame analysis as its main methodological tool. The study analyzed framing used in several dozens of the two organizations’ written texts, such as their official documents, news items, recommendations, leaflets, social media entries, and contents on their official web pages. Following the consensus existing in critical scholarship on the third sector professionalization, the main hypothesis of this study is that at the level of self-representation religious organizations readily abandon their original identity and values of spiritual concern and care for their charges, instead positioning themselves primarily as “experts.” In the course of the study, three mainframes were identified: religious “patience,” aligned with the original mission and identity of the organizations; “humanism,” popular among the medical geriatric community; and “professionalization,” which implies self-positioning as experts. The analysis revealed that discourses of “patience” and “humanism” are used relatively rarely, be it at the level of caregivers or in the organizations’ statutory documents. In turn, “professionalization” was the most common type of self-representation, proving the study’s main hypothesis to be correct.
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The dominant discourse in contemporary Russian society judges aging as a person’s defeat and defines success as the ability to hide the physical and bodily signs of one’s age. Old age is often constituted in public consciousness as the age of decline—decline in learning abilities, physical attractiveness, desires, activity, and so on. Social norms that restrict the behavior of older people should be defined as ageism. Resistance to ageism, in other words resistance to restrictive social constructs, is essential for subjective well-being of older people. The purpose of this article is to consider aging in contemporary Russia as a complex phenomenon that consists of certain rules and practices. Is it possible to resist the negative discourse of aging associated with decline? What would aging look like if it was possible to at least partially free ourselves from negative social beliefs about age? This research was carried out within a qualitative paradigm. The empirical material is based on 18 in-depth narrative interviews with 10 women and 8 men aged between 60 and 86. The results of the study reveal that existing norms and rules of aging in Russian society are related to the exclusion of older people from the public sphere and discrimination in the private sphere: they restrict the capacities of older people, deny their agency in determining their own goals and abilities to act in their own interest. Older people interiorize these norms and rules, and this leads to self-discrimination and perpetuation of ageism.
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Review of: Юлия Зеликова - Torbjörn Bildtgård and Peter Öberg. Intimacy and Ageing: New Relationships in Later Life. Bristol, UK: Policy Press, 2017. 212 pp. ISBN 978-1-4473-2649-6
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The essay is a reaction to the crisis that is happening in the sphere of theory and policy of solving the problem of aging society in European countries and in Russia. For nearly 20 years the concept of active aging and the neoliberal policy on aging, formulated in the Madrid Plan of Action, have been considered the defining international benchmarks of coping with the process of the aging of societies. In recent years Russia has integrated the norms and principles of the Madrid Plan into its national aging policy. The coronavirus pandemic has called into question the soundness of the concept that represents the aging process from the standpoint of social constructivism and smoothens the boundaries between age groups. One of the most important foundations of the entire neoliberal aging project—the link between activity and social inclusion, which is designed to integrate the elderly into the sphere of labor and consumption and, thereby, solve the problems of social exclusion of the elderly and their negative image as a burden to society—in the current situation turns out to be unsustainable. The coronavirus pandemic has restored the salience of boundaries between age groups and the physiological distinctiveness of an aging body. The struggle for the inclusion of the elderly has been replaced—temporarily—by the struggle for their exclusion. This essay examines the theoretical approaches underlying the concept of active aging as it was formulated in the Western context and as has been adapted in Russia. The essay culminates in the question of whether the coronavirus crisis will generate a demand for a new concept of aging.
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The essay presents an analysis of the interviews and life history of an informant diagnosed with dementia. Special attention is paid to the peculiarities of the sociologist’s work with such material, which, unlike most interviews, is “irrational,” full of semantic failures and contradictions. The usual methods of sociological analysis and interpretation are powerless in such cases, and the researcher needs a fundamentally different approach to the material in order to break through unusual reflections and time collisions and to get closer to understanding the informant. This essay is based on the material collected in the framework of the Oxford Russia Fellowship program in a rural nursing home in one of the regions of Russia and examines peculiarities of conducting and analyzing interviews with an informant diagnosed with dementia. Furthermore, the author reflects on what the researcher ought to do to find “semantic hints”—connecting bridges between the past and present in the informant’s narrative.
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Objectives: The implementation of non-pharmacological concepts in the care of patients with dementia has proven to be highly effective. One of them is Erwin Böhm’s psychobiographic model (EB) model. The contribution offers the results of research, which aims to map the extent of use of EB psychobiographic model in the selected facilities providing care in patients with dementia and to identify the experiences of workers providing direct care to the patients with its application. Material and methods: Applied was self-designed questionnaire. The file included respondents providing direct care in the patients with dementia in 12. the facilities in Czech Republic. For data analysis were used statistic methods. Results: EB model is more often used in the facilities with the higher proportion of patients with dementia. In the facilities, which use EB model is statistically significantly higher proportion of university educated personnel. Respondents with healthcare university education are statisticallysignificantly more interested in the issue of EB model (p < 0,001). Test results are highly significant and therefore prove the accuracy of Erwin Böhm´s psychobiographic model in care in patients with dementia (p < 0,001) likewise positive is its effect on the change in patients´ behaviour. Conclusion: The results clearly confirmed the usefulness of the use of psyhobiographic model in patients with dementia. It is more frequently used in the facilities with the higher proportion of clients with dementia and with the higher number of guardian nurses with university education in the field of healthcare.
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Pneumonia in younger and older patients is similar in many categories, but there are many differences that are essential for early diagnosis, proper treatment, and prevention in older patients. Characteristic categories for the elderly patient are oligosymptomatics, cognitive impairment and, in general, the consequences of the aging process. The main risk factor for pneumonia is age over 65 years. Current knowledge about the risk factors for pneumonia in old age suggests the need for a comprehensive and individual approach to the issue.
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