Quality in Ageing and Older Adults: Volume 3 Issue 1

Editorial

Alan Walker

Growing Older: An ESRC research programme

Alan Walker

The purpose of this article is to introduce the ESRC's Growing Older Programme and to outline some of the challenges it is facing. I will also put the Programme in context so that…

Quality of life: What, how, why?: The view of healthcare professionals

Christopher McKevitt, Charles Wolfe

Although ‘quality of life’ is thought to be an important concept in healthcare, there is a lack of agreement about what this term means. This paper arises from a study which made…

Spiritual belief and quality of life: The experience of older bereaved spouses

Peter Coleman, Fionnuala McKiernan, Marie Mills, Peter Speck

Spiritual wellbeing is a neglected aspect of quality of life in British research on ageing. US research emphasises the health and other benefits of religious belief for American…

Gender, ethnicity and empowerment in later life

Haleh Afshar, Myfanwy Franks, Mary Maynard, Sharon Wray

Studies of later life are increasingly emphasising its positive aspects as a time which is not necessarily linked to decline and dependency. Gender is also accepted as an…

Loneliness in later life: Preliminary findings from the Growing Older project

Christina Victor, Sasha Scambler, John Bond, Ann Bowling

Loneliness is consistently presumed to be a specific ‘social problem’, which accompanies old age and growing older. Ninety per cent of the general population of Britain feel that…

Self‐talk versus needs‐talk: An exploration of the priorities of housebound older people

John Baldock, Jan Hadlow

This article argues that the material and social circumstances of older people living with disabilities mean that their priorities and subjective evaluations of quality of life…