Retirement is recognized as a family experience, affecting retirees, their spouses, and their children. This study examined how the retirement transition affects the middle class, healthy, and financially secure male retiree and his wife. In-depth interviews were conducted with 92 couples from the Boston area in which the husband had been retired…

There is nothing in American society to prepare women for aging. It has been proposed that the status that the aged hold in any culture diminishes when modernization, an increased number and proportion of elderly, or rapid social change is present. All three of these conditions exist in American society. Women face many dangers, especially as they…

The study explored behavioral procedures for developing the skill of standing from a chair for a severely mentally retarded 11-year-old nonambulatory girl and an 86-year-old man residing in a nursing home for the elderly. Functional assessment and programing determined the specific instructional needs of each S. A changing criterion design was…

Two types of elderly alcohol abusers are described. Early onset or long-term alcohol abusers are abusers with long-standing behavioral problems considered well known to the social service delivery system. Late-life onset elderly alcohol abusers are those whose drinking problems began in the later years, after age 50, often in response to stresses…

The effect of contact with older adult volunteers on the attitudes of elementary school students was investigated by twice administering questionnaires to all first-, third-, and fourth-grade students at Chapin Elementary School, Chapin, South Carolina. Teachers first administered the questionnaire before the older adults began volunteer work in…

World knowledge is defined as information that is acquired by adults from life experiences. To investigate question answering processes involving world knowledge systems, 120 young, middle-aged and older adults were given questions intended to induce either fact retrieval or inferential reasoning. Multiple-choice and true/false formats were used.…

The paper reports results of one project from the National Institute of Mental Health Epidemiologic Catchment Area (ECA) Program: the Duke ECA study (also known as the Piedmont Health Survey). To determine if depressive symptoms are different in the depressed elderly, 46 community subjects, over 60 years of age with a current diagnosis of…

This study investigated factors related to retirement satisfaction in a midwestern rural population. Four major sets of variables were investigated: personal background factors; socialization for retirement; reasons for retirement; and social integration. Interviews were conducted with 252 men and 199 women who are participating in a larger 5-year…

Some research suggests that age differences in memory may result from older adults' difficulty in activating preexisting semantic structures. A study was conducted to examine whether older adults could use experimenter-provided elaborators which facilitate memory, or could generate their own elaborators, and to rate the quality of elaborators…

The effects of stress on the psychosocial well-being of older persons have been well documented. Research on stress among the aged has generally considered recent life events as salient stressors in late life and has focussed on older persons without regard to racial differences. Interviews were conducted with 400 elderly black and white residents…

The author examines the roles volunteers can assume in the school and the potential for conflicts with teachers before offering guidelines for the selection and orientation of volunteers. It is hoped that these general guidelines will apply to a volunteer program that uses older adults. (IRT)

Retirement is a life cycle phase most couples can now expect to experience. Research on retirement has been directed primarily toward the impact of retirement on the retiree, rather than on the marital dyad. Qualitative and quantitative changes that women experience were investigated, with regards to their role as wife in response to their…

This paper contains learning activities on aging for use with elementary, high school, and university students in health, family relationships, social studies, and art courses. The activities are intended to help youth develop a more realistic understanding of the aging process and to become aware of both the problems and benefits associated with…

As the number of older adults in the United States increases, more must be understood about their reading behaviors so that adequate services might be provided for them. In addition, carefully documented reading behaviors might yield valuable clues to the early establishment of lifelong reading habits. With these goals in view, a study…

It was hypothesized that women in different current life circumstances would emphasize different life content areas in verbal reports of their life histories. A basically homogeneous sample of 30 women (average age = 58.5) was divided into women who had never had children, women whose children had left home, and women who had at least one child…