Aging & Social Change: Ninth Interdisciplinary Conference

Abstract

A scoping review of the literature was conducted in order to identify any existing research that examined the perspectives of older adults on their views of successful and/or active ageing and, based on the views of the older adults, provide future directions for the conceptualization of old age and the ageing process. An initial 366 articles were identified and after an iterative process of article review by two researchers, twenty-three studies met the inclusion criteria, which were 1) ageing was investigated from the perspective of older adults; and 2) the article was published in English between 2002 (the year WHO’s active aging framework was published) and 2017. Information from each article was inputted into a data extraction form and the forms were reviewed to create a list of themes found across the studies. Twelve main themes were found and ranged from the importance of social relationships and interactions (f = 20) to having a good death (f = 2). Findings from this review indicated that older adults identified both internally and externally controlled elements of ageing and relayed their experience of and perspective on successful and active aging as a combination of social, psychological, physical, financial, environmental, and spiritual aspects. The findings suggest that we elevate the strengths and resilience found in older people, while also supporting changes that occur during the ageing process through progressive approaches to care, support, programming, and policy.