The elderly have generally been portrayed as needy recipients of services; only recently has attention been paid to their contributory role. To explore the nature and characteristics of helping behavior among urban elderly, 117 residents of senior citizens' housing sites in Detroit completed the Altruism Scale for the Elderly and a second measure…

Research with older persons suffering from physical illness presents numerous challenges to gerontologists. Issues of conceptualization pertaining to the definition of illness, its location in the research paradigm, and the context in which illness occurs must be addressed prior to dealing with methodological problems. Access to physically ill…

This first section of this paper reviews the literature on the social world of the institutionalized elderly. Social factors contributing to institutionalization are discussed, including the personal and psychological background of residents. Social behavior and the institutional environment are reviewed, focusing on social interactions among…

This review of the literature on prosocial behavior in the elderly provides empirical data on the prevalence of helping behaviors among the elderly and the range of motives underlying their helping. Implications of these data for theories of social behavior in later life are considered, and questions are raised about the validity of the models…

Research on helping behavior has focused on help to elderly individuals rather than help by elderly individuals. To investigate the determinants and consequences of helping by older adults, 117 adults, from five Detroit senior citizen residences, with a mean age of 75.6 (67 percent female) completed a personal/demographic questionnaire, including…