Faculty
Health Sciences
Supervisor Name
Carri Hand
Keywords
older adults, old age, seniors, leisure, participation, exclusion, inclusion, social spaces, aging in place
Description
Older adults often face challenges in meaningful occupations in their neighbourhoods, often tied to place-based barriers and changes including neighbourhood decline or gentrification. The objectives of this study are to draw on findings from an ethnographic study exploring older adults’ lives in their neighbourhoods, in order to contextually situate the diverse experiences of older adults as they engage in community occupations, focusing on social participation and leisure. We employed an ethnographic methodology with 38 older adults living in two neighbourhoods in a mid-sized Canadian city. Participants engaged in narrative interviews, photo elicitation interviews, go-along interviews, and activity-space mapping with follow-up interviews. We analyzed data using thematic and data visualization techniques. Through this, we found that neighbourhood changes were often connected to decreases in social and leisure engagement by participants, sometimes tied to loss of spaces for informal social participation. Available occupational opportunities were often perceived as for ‘seniors’, an identity that many participants rejected. Participants also experienced exclusion from sites of social and leisure occupations, often based on social identities related to income, length of residency in the neighbourhood, language, gender, ability, and marital status. Participants also actively negotiated spaces and relationships to create occupational opportunities and a sense of belonging. Our findings thus highlight that there is a need to foster diverse, inclusive neighbourhood opportunities for occupational engagement among older adults. Collaboration is needed to identify, develop and advocate for such opportunities, such as developing local spaces into places of informal occupational engagement or improving existing opportunities.
Acknowledgements
Dr. Carri Hand, Engage Lab members, participants of the Aging & Neighbourhoods study, Western Research, Western Libraries, and the USRI Program.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 License.
Document Type
Poster
Included in
Occupational Therapy Commons, Recreation, Parks and Tourism Administration Commons, Social Policy Commons, Urban Studies Commons
Exploring leisure, social participation in older adults
Older adults often face challenges in meaningful occupations in their neighbourhoods, often tied to place-based barriers and changes including neighbourhood decline or gentrification. The objectives of this study are to draw on findings from an ethnographic study exploring older adults’ lives in their neighbourhoods, in order to contextually situate the diverse experiences of older adults as they engage in community occupations, focusing on social participation and leisure. We employed an ethnographic methodology with 38 older adults living in two neighbourhoods in a mid-sized Canadian city. Participants engaged in narrative interviews, photo elicitation interviews, go-along interviews, and activity-space mapping with follow-up interviews. We analyzed data using thematic and data visualization techniques. Through this, we found that neighbourhood changes were often connected to decreases in social and leisure engagement by participants, sometimes tied to loss of spaces for informal social participation. Available occupational opportunities were often perceived as for ‘seniors’, an identity that many participants rejected. Participants also experienced exclusion from sites of social and leisure occupations, often based on social identities related to income, length of residency in the neighbourhood, language, gender, ability, and marital status. Participants also actively negotiated spaces and relationships to create occupational opportunities and a sense of belonging. Our findings thus highlight that there is a need to foster diverse, inclusive neighbourhood opportunities for occupational engagement among older adults. Collaboration is needed to identify, develop and advocate for such opportunities, such as developing local spaces into places of informal occupational engagement or improving existing opportunities.