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Characterising older adults’ engagement in age-friendly community initiatives: perspectives from core group leaders in the Northeast United States of America

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2020

Emily A. Greenfield Open the ORCID record for Emily A. Greenfield [Opens in a new window]  and
Laurent Reyes Open the ORCID record for Laurent Reyes [Opens in a new window]
Emily A. Greenfield*
Affiliation:
School of Social Work, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA
Laurent Reyes
Affiliation:
School of Social Work, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA
*
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

Researchers and programme champions alike have identified older adults as key contributors to age-friendly community change efforts. There has been very little scholarship, however, to characterise the nature of older adults’ engagement in age-friendly community initiatives (AFCIs). To help address this gap, we drew on five waves of data from semi-structured interviews with core group members of eight AFCIs in a Northeast region of the United States of America. Interviews were conducted as part of a multi-year, community-engaged study on the development of philanthropically supported AFCIs. We iteratively coded segments of the interviews in which core group members described the involvement of older adults, as well as their efforts to engage older adults in the initiatives. This analysis resulted in an inductive-analytic typology with five qualitatively distinct categories, including older adults as: (a) consumers (receiving information, goods and services through the AFCI), (b) informants (sharing perspectives on ageing in the community with the core group), (c) task assistants (assisting with project-oriented tasks under the direction of the core group), (d) champions (contributing ideas and implementing action on their own initiative), and (e) core group members (holding primary responsibility for driving the work of the AFCI forward). We discuss implications of the typology for research on AFCI implementation and evaluation, as well as opportunities for AFCIs to enhance the engagement of older adults from historically marginalised groups.

Keywords

social participationcivic engagementinclusionvolunteerqualitativetheorycommunity practicestrengths-based
Type
Article
Information
Ageing & Society , Volume 42 , Issue 6 , June 2022 , pp. 1465 - 1484
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

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