A study examined the relationships between the media, public opinion and the Medicare Catastrophic Act of 1988 which was repealed in 1989. Using the NEXIS electronic database, 11 years (1977-89) of news articles, opinion pieces, editorials, and letters to the editor were harvested in random sequence from the Associated Press news wire, the…

Recent studies suggest that in times of growing liberalism in public opinion, social and political attitudes in all age cohorts become more tolerant. Such studies have challenged the long standing assumptions that social and political attitudes become more conservative as people age. To extend the research on this subject, a study was conducted to…

Research on adult memory for nonverbal representations has found a significant age-related decrement in performance. To investigate age differences in adult locational versus featural information in visual memory, 90 adult women (29 young women with a mean age of 21; 30 middle aged women with a mean age of 43; and 31 older women with a mean age of…

To investigate the coping skills and adaptational outcomes among elderly survivors of the holocaust and a comparison group of aged individuals who did not endure extreme stress requires overcoming several methodological challenges. First, stress must be defined to include the personal meaning or evaluation of the sources of stress and its…

The research literature on aging was reviewed to determine findings with direct implications for educational programs for older persons and findings with no direct application but that raise further research questions. The focus was on cognition and learning in later life, predominantly on work published during the past two decades in major…

Research examining the relationship between the frequency of grandchildrens' contact with grandparents and attitudes toward the elderly has produced conflicting results. In order to determine what kinds of contact between young people and their grandparents were meaningful and important to adolescents, interviews were conducted with 32 adolescents…

Project LINC (Living Independently through Neighborhood Cooperation) was a three year demonstration project designed to enable older people to remain in independent living by strengthening their neighborhood-based informal support systems. To determine if LINC met its goals and reached the elderly population it was designed for, a pre- and…

The hypothesis of this 1982 study of retirees in the city of Windsor (Canada) is that retired persons with the fewest housing constraints should exhibit a more active leisure behavior pattern and a higher expression of life satisfaction. To obtain the retirees' socioeconomic and demographic profile data, life histories, freetime activity patterns…

To determine the relationship of various forms of communication to adoption of energy conservation behavior among homeowners, and to compare the energy conserving behavior of those under 65 with those over 65, a three-year panel study was conducted in a Midwest suburban community. Heads of households who owned single family dwellings were…

This study sought to uncover the variables which account for much of the variance in life satisfaction among older residents of the Lynds' classic, sociological community setting: Middletown, USA (Muncie/Delaware County, Indiana). Data were collected in 1987 from 400 random telephone interviews with older adults (60 years of age and older). Six…

A study measured the effect of reading materials containing positive depictions of aging and the elderly on the attitudes of primary grade children toward aging and elderly adults. Subjects, 91 students from grades one to three enrolled in a Jacksonville, Florida public school, read stories selected from "aging/elderly positive"…

A study to determine the health status of older persons and to analyze the support provided to them by community health and social service agencies in Ohio is reported. As a cooperative effort of the Gerontology Program and the Medical College at Bowling Green University, the project specifically sought to conduct a health needs assessment of…

Interest in the development of community-based long-term care (CBLTC) programs as a substitute for institutional-based care has been steadily growing. The estimated benefits from the Multipurpose Senior Services Program (MSSP), California's intensive CBLTC system, were measured by the expected increase in community residency days for clients for a…

To broaden the scope of a letter writing unit for seventh graders, a real-life component brought together two groups who could learn from one another, youngsters (who usually did not have living or nearby grandparents) and the elderly in a convalescent home. Students selected their pen pals on the basis of biographical data and similar interests…

At each age learning is a complex interaction of motivation, cognition, and development. In older adults, motivation is often related to a lifelong personality construct or personal meaning that an older individual will seek to play out when given the opportunity in late life. The needs of the older adult learner can be discussed in terms of…