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Study Design Multi-disciplinary Since the aging process affects all aspects of a person at once, no one aspect can be analysed in isolation from the others. For this reason, research on aging needs to gather information on a wide range of items and thus to embrace a number of disciplines. The Fredericton 80+ Study is well suited to meet this need by using a variety of questionnaires, tests, tasks, and interviews concerning the health, social, and psychological aspects of its participants' lives. As well, 30 participants are engaging in open-ended life story interviews in which they talk about their experience of aging. Longitudinal-sequential A principal objective of gerontology is to describe and explain the process of aging. Much of our knowledge of that process is limited, however, because it is based on data from cross-sectional studies. Such studies compare, for example, 80-year olds with 70-year olds at one time of measurement on a limited range of variables. This approach tells us something about age differences but not about age changes. Better suited to studying the process of aging is a longitudinal design, which follows the same group of individuals (or cohort) over an extended period of time. More helpful still is a combined design called "longitudinal-sequential" which introduces additional cohorts at regular intervals - in the case of the 80+ Studies, every five years. This enables invaluable comparisons insofar as cohorts can differ significantly in terms of background conditions that have shaped their lives, such as career opportunities, levels of health care and education, and events like wars and depressions. By using such a design in partnership with the other two sites, a comparison of information across both cohorts and cultures may be possible. International The Fredericton 80+ Study was established as a result of the tenure of Dr. Torbjörn Svensson as Visiting Chair in Gerontology at St. Thomas University in 1996. Dr. Svensson, of the Gerontology Research Centre in Lund, Sweden, is the principal architect of what is now an international research project concerning the aging process in the latest stages of life. The original Lund 80+ Study was launched in 1988. In 1993, a second cohort of 80-year olds was added in Lund, while the study as a whole was expanded to Reykjavik, Iceland. In 1998, a third cohort of 80-year olds (born 1918) was added in Lund, a second in Reykjavik, and a first in Fredericton. |
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