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Research Description: I conduct research on people's agency in facing and managing the normative, socially structured transitions of the life course. My publications have addressed issues of social structure and aging, decision-making processes for later life, and techniques for the analysis of time-series data. My research specialty is the transition from work to retirement.
Current Projects:
"Changing Plans and Decisions for Retirement"
This project, underway in 1997 with funding from the National Institute on Aging, studies the sequential decision making for retirement that workers conduct through their 50s and 60s. The overall objective is to support a developmental view of retirement. In doing so, my colleagues and I propose to move the focus on retirement decision making "upstream" to focus on provisional plans made and remade that cumulatively channel older workers toward late career employment and retirement outcomes. The project uses information from four waves of the national Health and Retirement Study (1992-1998) on a population of 9,800 male and female workers aged 51-61. This project will contribute useful knowledge about workers’ emotional and financial preparation for their later years--about who chooses their future and who risks losing control.
"Strategies for Household Disbandment"
This new project, supported by the National Institute on Aging, studies the tasks that elders undertake for the disposition of personal possessions when they move their residence to smaller quarters in later life. This is a novel topic for gerontological research that bears on numerous issues in aging research and service provision, including independence and effective functioning, self-management, housing and relocation, emotions, self-concept, and family relationships and care giving. If the sheer physical and emotional demands of disbandment are an obstacle to the timeliness of moves, elders may delay or abandon efforts to move to suitable housing where they can continue to function at optimal levels. We will interview people who have recently moved in the Lawrence and Kansas City areas. For each of these households, we will also interview one family member who had significant participation in disbandment activities. Findings from this project will be of practical interest to elders and family members and to many categories of service providers.
Research Description:
My research addresses the social cognitive processes that link communication behavior and age stereotyping. With support from the National Institute on Aging/National Institutes of Health my research team and I have been able to describe several aspects of age stereotypes. These include the nature of the traits associated with positive and negative age stereotypes, attitudes toward the stereotypes, physical cues to the stereotypes. In addition, we have examined the extent to which the stereotypes are shared by adults of different ages. Finally, we have identified a link between negative age stereotypes and a form of communication termed "patronizing talk". My current research projects involve an investigation of implicit age stereotyping and communication, and a study of family decision-making processes.
With support from the National Institute on Aging since 1985, I have gone from studying how older adults’ working memory limitations affected their production and comprehension, especially of complex syntax, to the study of how to enhance comprehension through "elderspeak," a special speech register targeted at older adults. I’ve also done some work examining how dementia, especially Alzheimer’s disease, effects older adults’ language and together with other research and together with other researchers involved in the Nun Study, we are examining early language abilities as a predictor of late-life cognitive impairment and Alzheimer’s disease. Currently, students are studying how processing limitations affect older adults’ language production and comprehension, age differences in the structure of verbal abilities, effects of aging on eye movement patterns while reading, and use of elderspeak in intergenerational discourse. Abstracts of recent publications and descriptions of work in progress can be found at the website Language Across the Lifespan.
Research Description:
My previous and current research experience falls under three main projects which clearly demonstrate my interest in research on health and aging. In the future I plan on elaborating on these various projects.
Informal Caregiving to the Frail Elderly: The Role of Friends and Neighbors (with Dr. Norah Keating, University of Alberta)
The purpose of this research project was to determine whether non-kin caregivers make a substantial contribution to the long term informal care of the frail elderly. This examination includes a comparison of non-kin caregivers and various family caregivers, and a comparison of the two largest sub-groups of non-kin caregivers, friends and neighbors. Competing hypotheses regarding the potential role of non-kin in long-term informal caregiving are drawn from exchange theory and symbolic interaction theory. The overall contributions of non-kin were determined to be substantial, and were offered at times at high personal cost to the caregiver. Future research on this topic will involve looking at the entire caregiving network and how various caregiving relationships are developed given the availability of kin and non-kin.
Marital Status and Depressive Symptoms Over Time: A Nuanced Investigation of Gender, Age, Resources, Status Duration and Living Arrangements
Guided by stress process theory and the life course perspective, this research contributes to the study of marital status and health by 1) critically examining the link between marital status and depressive symptoms contemporaneously and over time by age and gender; 2) using sophisticated path analysis techniques to reveal the relative importance of psychological, social and financial resources in explaining the relationship between marital status and depressive symptoms over time by gender; and 3) advancing our understanding of the roles of marital status duration and living arrangements on depressive symptoms by investigating the patterns of these effects by marital status and gender. In the future I will continue my research on the relationship between marital status and health, particularly among older adults, incorporating a broader range of health indicators.
All in the Family: The Impact of Caring for Grandchildren on Grandparents' Health (with M.E. Hughes, Duke University; Linda Waite, University of Chicago; and Ye Luo, University of North Florida)
This project examines how caring for grandchildren is associated with grandparents’ subsequent health, net of grandparents’ characteristics and prior health. Details of the findings from this study can be found in the publication: Hughes, Mary Elizabeth, Linda Waite, Tracey A. LaPierre, and Ye Luo. (2007) “All in the Family: The Impact of Caring for Grandchildren on Grandparents’ Health.” Journal of Gerontology, Social Sciences, 60: S108-119. My research on grandparents who are providing care for their grandchildren and grandparent-grandchild relationships in general is ongoing. Currently, I am looking at factors that influence the flow of emotional, instrumental (babysitting and caregiving) and financial support between grandparents and grandchildren and the implications of the exchanges of various types of support on well-being for both groups.
Research Description:
My research focuses on issues related to independent living and health promotion for people with physical disabilities. Specifically, I'm interested in reducing the prevalence and severity of secondary health conditions; promoting function and independence for people with disabilities through increasing regular participation in physical activity; and improving access to health care, particularly to preventive health screening services. I have conducted numerous health promotion studies over the past several years and in September of 2005 will begin a 5 year, NIH-funded study to evaluate the effectiveness of an intervention to promote home- and community-based physical activity among wheelchair users. With the recent funding of a small pilot study, I am also beginning to investigate the role of stress in lives of people with disabilities and its effect on their health by developing a disability-related stress measure for people with physical disabilities.
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The University of Kansas Gerontology Center Dole Human Development Center 1000 Sunnyside Ave. Room 3090 Lawrence, KS 66045-7555 gerontology@ku.edu 785/864-4130 |
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