The research stems from a legal pluralism approach to law which postulates that different levels of law can operate simultaneously in a given situation. The concept is applied to nursing homes in New Brunswick. The research had three phases. A grid of the rights of nursing home residents was first built. Secondly, New Brunswick law was analysed with that grid. Thirdly, administrative policies gathered from nursing homes were also analysed. The law is often silent with respect to the rights of nursing home residents. However, that vacuum is filled by administrative policies which vary from one nursing home to another. Statistical differences are found between nursing homes administered by religious organizations and those administered by non-profit corporations. Recommendations are made to better protect the rights of nursing home residents.

Many individuals have tube feeding implemented in the end stages of life. It is also common to have surrogates making life support decisions for others. When family members are placed in the role of decision-maker for an incompetent patient, what factors influence life support decisions? A case study and ethnomethodological inquiry provide an in-depth understanding of factors that influenced one daughter in her decision to have tube feeding implemented for her incompetent and severely debilitated mother. The decision was difficult and constituted a time of crisis. Unfortunately, the most influential factors in decision-making were: (a) urgency in the face of impending death, (b) lack of insight into the mother's values and preferences in relation to life support through tube feeding, (c) lack of knowledge over what tube feeding involved, and (d) the belief that tube feeding would not prolong her mother's life and suffering. Nine other, less influential, factors were also found. Improving the sensitivity of health care professionals to the agony of decision-making and to the decision-making process for life support are the major focuses of this paper.

North American gerontology has largely been shaped by the theories and methods of bio-medical researchers and social scientists. Among other things, this has meant that “qualitative” approaches in research on aging have been of secondary importance. Scholars do not always mean the same thing by the term. This essay cannot resolve all of the paradigmatic issues that separate “hard” and “soft” science, but it does propose that researchers take a more self-critical, even autobiographical, orientation to making sense of their own aging careers.

Dementing illnesses, such as Alzheimer's disease, cause great changes in individuals – sometimes even leading us to say that they are “different persons”. Professional caregivers to these individuals may better understand them and their suffering (and thus provide more compassionate care), if they look at the illness in the context of the individual's life. Although their personhood has been threatened by dementia, appreciating the gestalt, or integrity of their lives may help preserve it. The clinical focus, which currently looks only at problems, should also assess the individual's remaining strengths, positive functions and characteristics. A case scenario helps to illustrate these suggestions. Some recommendations to researchers, clinicians and bioethicists for further study in this area are included.

This paper argues that qualitative methods are especially appropriate for studying older families because they are better suited than survey data for conceptualizing interdependence. It further argues that the current availability of data from large-scale surveys has led family researchers down the wrong path if the interdependence of family members is to be recognized and explored in research. The absence of clearcut rules for conducting and presenting the products of qualitative research is suggested as a virtue rather than the drawback it is often presumed to be.

The purpose of this study was to describe the elderly marital partners' perceptions of conjugal support and coping strategies and the relationship between these perceptions and their well-being. A multistage sample of 135 community-dwelling elderly couples, 65 years of age and over, was drawn from users and non-users of the health and social systems in a large metropolitan area. A series of questionnaires, presented within an interview format, were used to measure the variables. Each spouse was separately interviewed at home. Paired t-tests revealed that husbands tended to perceive more support from their spouse and to use less external social support than wives when coping with daily problems. Intraclass coefficients of correlation between husbands' and wives' coping strategies were only low to moderate. However, for both marital partners, results revealed significant positive correlations between availability and reciprocity of conjugal support and well-being and a negative association between conflict within the conjugal relationship and well-being. Only two cognitive coping strategies, namely reframing and active appraisal were positively related to the well-being of both spouses. Repeated measures analysis of variance revealed that congruency of perception between husbands and wives had an effect only on wives' well-being. These findings suggest psychosocial interventions and are discussed in relation to previous studies and future research.

This research evaluates the time competence of the aged in relation to sex, age, living environment, activities, health, and socio-economic status. One hundred and sixty subjects answered a socio-demographic questionnaire. Level of time competence was evaluated by the time competence subscale of the Personal Orientation Inventory (POI) (Shostrom, 1966) and by the estimate of an interval of 40 seconds (Newman, 1972, 1976). Analysis of variance shows that level of time competence varies according to age, satisfaction in the number of activities, subjective assessment of health and living environment. These results show the possible importance of objective health in the evaluation of the time competence. In fact, subjects from the 65–75 age group living in institutions show more physical deterioration than the other subjects and less time competence. For the older subjects, time competence does not differ according to the life environment. It would therefore be important, in further studies, to take this variable into account. These results and those of earlier studies reveal that the personnel have to take into account the rate of activities imposed on the beneficiaries by their health condition when developing programs of activities because time competence also varies according to satisfaction with the number of activities. The results also cast a doubt on the sensitivity of the estimate of this particular time competence measure requiring an interval of 40 seconds.

In this paper it is argued that the voluntariness of decisions by older adults concerning future levels of health care should be viewed with scepticism, since such decisions are made in contexts of broad coercion. Broad coercion exists where there are asymmetries of power and dependency between groups, where social expectations unduly influence decisions, or where negative stereotyping results in low self esteem. Parallel cases, where broad coercion is acknowledged, are presented. Rather than conclude that older adults can never make voluntary decisions, however, it is suggested that scepticism may be removed by establishing the authenticity of the desires behind their health care choices. Three theories of authentic desire are examined and found inadequate, but a fourth alternative – the “autobiographical approach,” which requires us to uncover the personal metaphors of life and aging of older adults – is found to be more promising.