Examining Supportive Evidence for Psychosocial Theories of Aging within the Oral History Narratives of Centenarians

نویسندگان

  • Melinda Heinz
  • Grace da Rosa
  • Alex J. Bishop
  • Tanya Finchum
چکیده

Oral history provides researchers opportunities to assess narratives and compare them to existing theories of aging. Oftentimes the discussion of psychosocial theories of aging does not include the oldest-old. The purpose of this study was to assess evidence of psychosocial theories of aging within oral history narratives from a subsample of 20 centenarians from the Oklahoma 100 Year Life Oral History Project. Analysis utilized seven theories: Activity Theory, Continuity Theory, Disengagement Theory, Theory of Gerotranscendence, Modernization Theory, Selective Optimization with Compensation (SOC) Theory, and Socioemotional Selectivity Theory (SST). Researchers used content analysis to assess each oral history narrative and noted Activity Theory and Gerotranscendence had the most evidence. Most centenarians described how they were extremely active well into older adulthood. Common themes across oral history narratives indicated that centenarians maintained a preference for activity such as formal work. Centenarians also reported a readiness for death and little fear of it. In addition, increased time spent reflecting on spirituality and religion indicated changes in self-discovery. Identification of Disengagement and Socioemotional Selectivity were sparse in the transcripts. It is possible that to reach such longevity, centenarians relied on their communities and support networks to achieve this status. It is also possible that centenarians outlived individuals in their social networks who were emotionally fulfilling. Further qualitative work should assess evidence of psychosocial theories among other long-lived older adults.

برای دانلود رایگان متن کامل این مقاله و بیش از 32 میلیون مقاله دیگر ابتدا ثبت نام کنید

ثبت نام

اگر عضو سایت هستید لطفا وارد حساب کاربری خود شوید

منابع مشابه

Who is an Ideal Organizational Leader in Iran? Examining the Content, Structure, and Consequences of Iranian Implicit Leadership Theories (IILTS)

Implicit Leadership Theories (ILTs) are individuals’ perceptions of the traits and behaviors characterizing leaders. Four studies investigated the reliabilities and different types of validities for a scale developed to measure Iranian Implicit leadership Theories (IILTs). Study 1 used a qualitative method to extract the implicit theories of ideal leadership after interviewing 27 experts. The I...

متن کامل

Revisiting the Past: Contribution of Counter-narratives in Liminal Formation of Identity in Yasmin Crowther's The Saffron Kitchen

In diasporic literature the question of identity is tangled with the question of history. This study aims at discussing how Yasmin Crowther reviews the Persian tradition in The Saffron Kitchen, her autobiographical novel which is mainly set-in early 60s, Iran. The novel focuses on evoking and rewriting history by using different types of counter narratives that contrast with Iranian hegemonic d...

متن کامل

Understanding Centenarians' Psychosocial Dynamics and Their Contributions to Health and Quality of Life

While it is understood that longevity and health are influenced by complex interactions among biological, psychological, and sociological factors, there is a general lack of understanding on how psychosocial factors impact longevity, health, and quality of life among the oldest old. One of the reasons for this paradox is that the amount of funded research on aging in the US is significantly lar...

متن کامل

Successful aging among Chinese near-centenarians and centenarians in Hong Kong: a multidimensional and interdisciplinary approach.

OBJECTIVES This study applied a multidimensional model on a continuum to examine successful aging (SA) and investigated whether SA is associated with biomedical and psychosocial-demographic factors among Hong Kong Chinese near-centenarians and centenarians. METHOD A cross-sectional data analysis was performed on a geographically representative sample of 120 near-centenarians and centenarians ...

متن کامل

Review of Mechanisms and Theories of Aging

Several factors have incentive role for study of aging which includes increasing of the average and maximum of human life span, the increase in percentage of elderly in the societies and proportion of the national expenditure utilized by them. The Recent views of aging indicating that aging is extremely a complex multifactorial process despite of earlier views about definite cause aging like ge...

متن کامل

ذخیره در منابع من


  با ذخیره ی این منبع در منابع من، دسترسی به آن را برای استفاده های بعدی آسان تر کنید

عنوان ژورنال:

دوره   شماره 

صفحات  -

تاریخ انتشار 2017