This section highlights some of the history of our past research, overviewing the types of research themes studied, and listing past projects.
In keeping with the three main principles of i) a life course perspective, ii) rethinking aging, and iii) knowledge translation, past research at the institute focused on transitions in a number of areas: transition from work to retirement and back, family trajectories (e.g. grandparenting, widowhood), the life course of marginalized populations (e.g. older homeless and immigrants), health trajectories (e.g. abuse, chronic diseases) and trajectories in and out of poverty (e.g. Canadian women). Research can be both qualitative and quantitative or both, is always interdisciplinary, looks at prevention and ends with knowledge transfer. Some examples from these research clusters are as follows:
Work and Retirement Transitions
The latest study in this area investigated the relationships between two transitions – caregiving and retirement – and the implications for income after the caregiving was over. The study employed a multi-method approach using national data files (General Social Surveys) to investigate patterns of involuntary retirement to caregive and in-depth interviews with persons who self-reported that they were forced to retire to caregive. The results indicated that penalties inherent in restructuring a life to solve the immediate crisis of caregiving have long-term consequences. To retire to caregive comes at the expense of income stability in retirement mainly for women who are the least likely to be able to afford early retirement.
Family Transitions
Kinship care is an arrangement in which children, who can no longer be cared for by their parents and are raised by grandparents instead of entering foster care or adoption. Working with a national organization of kin care grandparents, a needs study of the transition into grandparenting was carried out, finding that financial literacy related to raising children was an over-whelming need since child welfare agencies provide no support for these new older parents. The research team, including the grandparents, is in process of developing paper and digital pocket financial tools to help ease their burden. The tools will be evaluated according to the degree of uptake, utilization and outcomes by the grandparents.
Health Transitions
A large pilot study to define and measure elder mistreatment, a precursor to a national prevalence study to be conducted in Canada, examined the prevalence of perceptions of abuse at each life stage, the importance of early life stage abuse in predicting types of elder abuse, and early life stage abuse as a risk factor for elder abuse. The conclusions indicate that a childhood history of abuse in this sample had a deciding influence on later mistreatment, over and above what happens in later life.
Homelessness and Transitions
The purpose of this research was to examine the individual and structural circumstances that contributed to eviction transitions in housing across the life course; to examine housing trajectories and how they spiralled into homelessness, and to examine the confluence of social polices operative during these transitions. Qualitative interviews and secondary data analysis indicated that the transitions from stable housing to unstable housing and back again, from threats of eviction to eviction orders, and from poorer housing to homelessness were different at various stages in the life course and stretched across generations. The study shows how the mismatch between housing policies and life course stages produce negative and costly effects for the precariously housed and the state.
PAST PROJECTS
- Engaged Scholarship: Evaluating Community Care for Older Adults, 2012-2018
- Developing an Action Plan for Addressing Social Isolation in Urban Dwelling Asian Seniors, 2015-2017
- Financial Literacy and First Nations Custodial Grandparents, 2015-2016
- National Survey on the Mistreatment of Older Canadians, 2012-2015
- Financial Literacy and Custodial Grandparents, 2012-2014
- Nice Knowledge Exchange, 2012-2013
- Defining and Measuring Elder Abuse: International Perspectives, 2012-2013
- Defining and Measuring Elder Abuse and Neglect – Preparatory Work Required to Measure the Prevalence of Abuse and Neglect of Older Adults in Canada, 2010-2012
- Human trafficking from the Former Eastern Bloc of Canada, 2011-2012
- Older Women and Financial Literacy: Bridging the Income Gap, 2010-2012
- National Initiative for the Care of the Elderly – NICE (refunding), 2009-2010
- Engaged Scholarship: Evaluating Community Care for Older Adults, 2009-2010
- Examining Knowledge Translation in Aging: Developing and Developed Countries, 2009-2010
- Improving Health Human Resources for Canada’s Aging Population: Recruiting Students to the Field of Aging, 2009-2010
- Attracting Students to Gerontology and Geriatrics, 2009-2010
- Engaged Scholarship: Evaluating Community Care for Older Adults (LOI), 2009-2010
- International Research on Aging (IOF), 2008-2009
- NICE Elder Abuse Team: Knowledge to Action, 2008-2011
- Institutional Abuse of Older Adults: What We Know, What We Need to Know, 2007-2008
- Qualitative Metasynthesis of Empirical Research on the Sex Trafficking of Women to Canada, 2007-2008
- From Homelessness to Home: A Knowledge Exchange, 2008-2009
- Bridging Aging and Domestic Abuse: Strategies for Social and Economic Inclusion, 2008-2009
- Annual NICE Knowledge Exchange 2008, 2008-2009
- Evictions and Housing Instability: A Life Course Perspective, 2008
- Building Partnerships for Service Provision to Migrant Sex Workers, 2007-2008
- Analysis of Second Language Training Programs for Older Adults in Canada, 2007-2008
- Systematic Review of Retirement Planning (Campbell Collaboration), 2006-2008
- Aging in Place, 2007
- Cluster on Population Change and Life Course, 2007-2014
- Life Course as a Policy Lens, 2006-2009
- International Collaboration for the Care of the Elderly (NCE), 2006-2009
- Project for an Ontario Women’s Health Evidence-based Report Card, 2006-2009
- National Initiative for the Care of the Elderly (NCE-NI), 2005-2011
- Healthy Aging in Immigrant Communities (Health Disparities LOI), 2005
- A Way Forward: Promoting Promising Approaches to Abuse Prevention in Institutional Setting, 2005-2007
- Canada in the 21st Century: Moving Towards an Older Society, SEDAP II (MCRI), 2005-2010
- In from the streets: The health and well-being of formerly homeless older adults, 2005-2007
- Retiring to Caregive, 2005-2008
- Community Gentrification and Building the Community from Within, 2005-2010
- Healthy and Successful Aging in an Urban Ethnic Environment, 2004-2006
- Measuring Health Inequalities among Canadian Women: Developing a Basket of Indicators, 2006-2007
- Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging, 2003-2004
- Health Status Disparities in the Urban Ethnic Elderly, 2003-2004
- The Older Homeless, 2002-2004
- Divorce and Separation in Retirement, 2002-2005
- The Retirement Experience of Older Gay Man and Lesbians, 2002-2005
- The Effectiveness and Efficiency of a Structured Adult Education Group Intervention, 2002
- A Study on the Settlement Related Needs of Newly Arrived Immigrant Seniors in Ontario, 2001
- OPTIONS 45: Survey of Canadian Employers, 1997
- OPTIONS 45: Survey of Employment Services Agencies, 1997