In a sample of 1449 adults, divided by age into young, middle-age, and old, mood was found to consist of two age invariant components, vigour and affect. Factor structure differed by age for affect but not vigour. For old adults, two unipolar affect factors were obtained, whereas one bipolar affect factor was obtained for the two younger groups. From these factor analyses a mood scale (the Memorial University Mood Scale, the MUMS) was developed and its predictive validity and reliability established for all age groups. Using the MUMS, mean level differences by age were found in both vigour and affect, as well as a measure of globed mood, with the old adults higher on all three measures. Age invariant, diurnal patterns were found for both vigour and affect. Vigour followed an inverted U-shaped diurnal pattern and affect a primarily linear pattern, suggestive of appraisals of somatic state and environmental conditions, respectively.

Changing demographics and hospital downsizing have placed increasing demands on the home care sector. Many of those receiving in-home care are seniors whose chronic conditions require a collaborative approach. Both providers' paternalistic orientations toward senior clients and seniors' passivity within provider–client interactions have the potential to undermine relationship building. While the former has been documented, how seniors perceive relationship building within the home has received little attention. The purpose of this study was to explore seniors' perspectives on relationship building with in-home providers, focusing particularly on the facilitators of and barriers to this experience. Applying interpretive phenomenology, in-depth interviews were conducted with a purposeful sample of senior clients and an immersion/crystallization analysis strategy was used to elicit the findings. Findings revealed that seniors perceived relationship building as a dynamic process that encompassed facilitators and barriers at both individual and contextual levels. The interpretive findings afford several insights into building provider–client relationships within the in-home context.

The rising number of older people living with disabilities and chronic diseases has increased home care needs. Studies and reviews exploring preventive approaches have proliferated, creating a need for a synthesis of evidence. We conducted a systematic review of systematic reviews to evaluate the effectiveness of preventive home visiting approaches for older people. Of the 5,973 citations identified in over 30 scientific and grey literature databases, 10 papers met all inclusion criteria. Systematic reviews were considered if they included controlled trials comparing interventions with and without professional home care. We found that interventions often included comprehensive geriatric assessments and follow-up visits. Results indicate that multidimensional preventive home visiting programs might have the potential to reduce mortality, in particular for younger subjects, and show a potential to improve functional autonomy, but these findings should be interpreted with caution due to the diversity of the interventions analysed.

Most research on stroke’s impact on couples has focused on the transition to caregiving/receiving. Despite considerable evidence that marriage is the primary source of support in the face of chronic conditions, little is known about what happens to marriage in the context of care after stroke. To address this gap, we undertook a qualitative grounded-theory study of 18 couples in which one partner had experienced a stroke. Findings revealed two interrelated themes of the couple processes: working out care, which involved discovering and addressing disruptions in day-to-day activities; and rethinking marriage, which involved determining the meaning of their relationship within the new context of care and disability. Three distinct types of marriages evolved from these processes: reconfirmed around their pre-stroke marriage; recalibrated around care; and a parallel relationship, “his” and “her” marriage. Our findings highlight the need to consider relationship dynamics in addition to knowledge about stroke and care.

Data from the Manitoba Study of Health and Aging were used to compare the utilization and direct costs of formal community care services among the elderly diagnosed as persons with no cognitive impairment, with cognitive impairment/no dementia and with dementia. The results of the analyses indicate that, in addition to living arrangement and limitation on basic and instrumental activities of daily living, mental function diagnosis is an independent predictor of community care use. A diagnosis of dementia increases the likelihood of community care use over those with unimpaired mental functioning, whereas cognitive impairment without dementia does not. The three diagnostic groups differ in the type of services used. Standardization by age, sex and the other variables which significantly affect the need for community care can help a program improve its ability to project realistic cost estimates.

Cet article se penche sur les conséquences du vieillissement en communauté rurale sur les services d'hébergement, les services sociaux, de santé, de transport et porte une attention particulière sur les conditions en Ontario. Suivant une discussion sur les caractéristiques propres au vieillissement dans les régions rurales, les auteurs évaluent l'état des connaissances sur les rapports entre vieillissement en millieu rurale et les problèmes d'hébergement, de soins, de services sociaux et de transport. La définition des enjeux et les choix de politiques ont été limités par une approche sectorielle. Les auteurs élargissent la perspective en proposant un modèle intégré à deux niveaux. Les choix de politiques sont discutés dans le cadre de ce modèle. Ils terminent en suggérant à tous les chercheurs qui s'intéressent au vieillissement de la population rurale de toujours tenir compte des différences qui existent entre diverses communautés locales, du dynamisme propre à la vie rurale, et de la nature intégrée des problèmes du vieillissement.

Des mécanismes moléculaires liant le cancer à la sénescence cellulaire sont présentement explorés. Les télomères (l'extrémité des chromosomes) raccourcissent à chaque division cellulaire et il a été proposé que ce raccourcissement soit l'horloge moléculaire qui déclenche le processus de la sénescence cellulaire. La re-expression de la télomérase, une enzyme qui aide à maintenir la longueur des télomères et à prévenir leur raccourcissement, est un événement fréquemment observé dans les cellules tumorales. Cette re-expression est probablement essentielle à la formation et à la croissance soutenue de la majorité des cancers.

Successful recruitment and retention for population-based longitudinal studies requires understanding facilitators and barriers to participation. This study explored Canadians’ views regarding one such study, the proposed Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging (CLSA). Focus groups of participants ≥40 years of age were held in six proposed CLSA data collection sites (Halifax, Montreal, Hamilton, Winnipeg, Calgary, and Vancouver) to discuss participating in a long-term study of healthy aging. There was fundamental support for longitudinal research on health and aging. Altruism was a key motivation to participation, and universities were viewed as credible parties to conduct such studies. Participants had few worries about providing biological samples but expressed concern about potential misuse of genetic materials, commercialization of participant data, and privacy issues. These findings have already informed current, and will inform future, work on the CLSA, and will also provide useful information to researchers who undertake other population-based longitudinal studies.

The “Facts on Aging Quiz” developed by Erdman Palmore has been extensively utilized as a brief, reliable, and easily administered test of factual knowledge on aging. This paper describes the applicability of the quiz in the Canadian context, and provides documentation for quiz items. Potential problems of misinterpretation of items relating to the rate of institutionalization and income levels, are noted. The paper also compares levels of knowledge and areas of misinformation among a sample (n=585) of undergraduates, university faculty, and health care professionals. The usefulness of the quiz in identifying differences in knowledge levels, is confirmed.

This study examines the perceptions of childlessness reported by 287 childless respondents aged 55 and over who were part of a larger study (n - 678) on aging and social support. Sixty-seven per cent (n = 193) report advantages to childlessness and 64 per cent (n = 185) report disadvantages. Qualitative data show that key perceived advantages are fewer worries or problems, financial benefits, greater freedom, and career flexibility. The major disadvantages are lack of companionship/being alone/loneliness, lack of support and care when older, and missing the experience of parenthood. Bivariate and multivariate analyses of the effects that gender, marital status, age, and childless status (childless by choice or by circumstance) have on the perceived advantages and disadvantages of having no children show that there is variability in perceived advantages only. When we compare specific perceived advantages and disadvantages to related experience, only some perceived benefits (financial advantage) are associated with actual experience. Findings are discussed in the context of actually experiencing costs and benefits versus sharing widely-held beliefs about childlessness.

In this study we examined the longitudinal relationships between five dimensions of social support and psychological distress to determine whether (1) social support was related to subsequent psychological distress levels; or (2) if distress levels were related to subsequent social support levels; or (3) if distress and support had a reciprocal (bi-directional) relationship across time. Using bivariate autoregressive cross-lagged models, we analysed data from 2,564 older adults. We found support for the reciprocal relationship between affectionate support and distress. Higher psychological distress was related to subsequently higher levels of positive social interaction, and significantly related to subsequently higher emotional/informational support. No significant relationship was found between tangible and structural support and psychological distress. This study demonstrates that different types of support are associated in correspondingly different ways with psychological distress, and that psychological distress may be important in predicting levels of social support two years later.

The French language imposes an additional difficulty for gerontological research: the lack of research on valid and reliable instruments of measurement in the French language. The translation into French of instruments already developed and validated in English is an interesting solution to this problem, since it offers the opportunity of profiting from previous research and allows for international comparisons. However, translation must follow strict rules to ensure that psychometric properties of the instrument have not been altered. A consensus workshop concluded that the following steps were needed in translating from English an instrument for gerontological research: (1) selection of the most valid and reliable instrument in English; (2) translation into French and back again into English; (3) review of the translated versions by a committee; (4) pretest; (5) test-retest (and if indicated inter-rater) reliability study. An inventory of all translated instruments showed that very few instruments fulfil these basic rules. This inventory is a useful tool for researchers and will stimulate research on measurement instruments and encourage publication of its results.

Drawing on a qualitative study of women as givers and receivers of care, this paper explores older women's experiences of needing care. Old women find themselves in a social context in which government services are kept in the background and families are generally regarded as the proper locus of assistance to old people. Respondents described contradictions between needing support and security and wanting to adhere to cultural values of independence and self-sufficiency. Their low expectations of public services and sense of marginality in their families exacerbated these dilemmas. The fallacy of understanding old women's conduct in this constrained context as the exercise of choice is elaborated, and attention is given to ways of fostering the conditions in which elderly women can shape the kinds of supportive environments they would like to see in the future.

An in-depth understanding of human factors and human error is lacking in current research on seniors' falls. Additional knowledge is needed to understand why seniors are falling. The purpose of this article is to describe the adapting of the Integrated Safety Investigation Methodology (ISIM) (used for investigating transportation and industrial accidents) to studying seniors' falls. An adapted version—the Seniors Falls Investigative Methodology (SFIM)—uses a systems approach to take an investigation beyond the immediate cause of an incident and reveal unsafe acts and deeply imbedded unsafe conditions that contribute to adverse outcomes. An example case study is used to describe six phases of the investigative process in detail. The SFIM has the potential to identify safety deficiencies; utilize existing knowledge about falls; establish a standardized reporting system; shift focus from the faller to the system; and guide targeted prevention.

Few studies of the risks of institutionalization of the elderly have had fully specified models using multivariate analysis, and several studies have examined highly selected populations, making their generalizability uncertain. We set out to examine the risks of institutionalization in elderly people in Nova Scotia. A case-control study, executed as part of the Canadian Study of Health and Aging examined 108 incident institutional cases and 533 community-dwelling elderly controls, using a standardized assessment interview conducted by trained interviewers. Multiple logistic regression analysis showed that advancing age, presence of dementia, functional impairment, poor self-rated health, recent hospital admission, and absence of a caregiver were important risks for entry into long term care. Institutions providing long-term care for the elderly need to be able to look after populations with a high prevalence of dementia and functional impairment.

Osteoarthritis (OA) in older adults is a prevalent chronic condition associated with substantial pain and disability. Oral analgesic use is a central component of symptom management. Medication use in this population, however, is complex and must balance the need for symptom control with drug safety concerns. Our study focus was to illustrate and discuss the variability in the medications used to manage OA-related symptoms. We analysed data from a sample of community-dwelling persons aged 55 and older with hip or knee arthritis to examine social and medical factors associated with reported variation in OA drugs. A key finding is that drug types used by OA patients vary by age and gender, independent of disease, and medical and social context. Possible explanations related to patient and professional preferences are considered.

The psychological well-being of family caregivers is influenced by their relations with care receivers, and whether they have choice in becoming a caregiver. Limited study has explored the interaction effect of caregiver-receiver relations and caregiving choice on caregivers’ psychological well-being. This study examines whether the caregiver’s perceived choice moderates the association between caregiver-receiver relation and psychological well-being. Using population-based data from the 2012 Canada General Social Survey – Caregiving and Care Receiving (n = 5,285), this study applies regression and ANCOVA analyses. Results show family caregivers for spouses and children report significantly worse psychological well-being, whereas having choice to become a caregiver is associated with better psychological well-being. There was a significant moderation effect of caregiving choice on the association between caregiver-receiver relation and psychological well-being. Findings suggest that more services should be targeted for family caregivers without choice for caregiving as well as those who provide care for their children.

Aspects of existentialism relevant to existence and death anxiety (DA) are discussed. Included are the “thrownness” of existence, being-with-others, the motivational influence of inevitable death, the search for meaning, making the most of existence by taking responsibility for one’s own life, and coping with existential isolation. The attempted separation of DA from object anxiety is a significant difficulty. The correlations among age, gender, and DA are variable. Personality and role-oriented problems in the transition to retirement are discussed along with Erikson’s notion of “generativity” as an expression of the energy and purpose of mid-life. Furthermore, methodological and linguistic problems in DA research are considered. The article suggests qualitative methodologies as an interpersonal means of exploring DA within the contexts of psychotherapy and counselling.

Although interest on older homelessness is gaining momentum, little research has considered the experiences of first-time homelessness from the perspective of older adults themselves. This constructivist grounded-theory study addresses this gap by exploring how societal perceptions of homelessness and aging shape access to housing, services, and perceptions of self for 15 older adults residing in emergency homeless shelters in Montreal, (Quebec, Canada). Findings revealed that homelessness evoked a grief response characterized by shock, despair, anger, and in some cases, relief. Connecting and receiving support from other shelter residents and staff helped participants to acknowledge and grieve their losses. However, difficult shelter conditions, the stigma associated with aging and homelessness, and not having their grief recognized or validated served to disenfranchise grief experiences. Conceptualizing later-life homelessness as disenfranchised grief contributes to the aging and homelessness literature while providing new avenues for understanding and validating the experiences of a growing population of vulnerable older adults.