Browsing by Subject "Gerontology"
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Item African American women working in the Twin Cities during the mid-twentieth century: discovering their vocational identity.(2010-03) Kelly, Sharon FExisting scholarship has no examination of attributing the discourse on vocational identity to African American women, which in this study, has been defined as what a woman ought to be and do. African American women have been a subject of scholarly inquiry on having the longest history of paid work. This qualitative dissertation contains their narrative excerpts on working in the Twin Cities during the mid-twentieth century (1945-1985) from interviews with seventeen women aged 65 to 87. Analyzed topics were the concept of vocation, the ideology of vocation within the intersections of race, gender, and class related to paid and unpaid work. Hermeneutic philosophy advanced by Gadamer (1960/1975) formed the methodological approach to elicit themes of their perceived vocational identity.Item Diversity of Expertise, Social Diversity, and Commitment: A Comparison of Five Teams at a Care Organization(2017-08) Kilaberia, TinaIn a three-paper dissertation format, this dissertation project examines five types of teams in a care organization that combines multiple levels of care. The study looked at the impact of diversity of expertise (study 1), social diversity (study 2), and commitment factors (study 3) in team environments in the context in which health and social care professionals participate together to serve older adults. This qualitative ethnographic study draws on 44 interviews, observations of 62 meetings, and a 5-year immersion in the setting. Broadly, the study is situated in the scholarship that examines the medical / non-medical divide, silo mindset, teams as action arms of care efforts, and the fit of social work in an interdisciplinary environment. Findings show that in the absence of direct organizational input into team design, diversity uptake, and rewards as perpetuated by pay inequity and high turnover, teams are left to self-organize, to cope with diversity ad-hoc, and commit based on intrinsic values rather than those stemming from team membership. The study draws on and contributes to organizational theories of team design, diversity theories, and the social work literature.Item A Longitudinal Analysis of the Effects of the NYU Caregiver Intervention-Adult Child on Subjective Health(2020-11-10) Albers, Elizabeth, AObjective: The present study examined whether the NYU Caregiver Intervention for Adult Children (NYUCI-AC) influenced the subjective health of adult child family caregivers of persons with dementia. Methods: A randomized controlled trial, conducted between 2006 and 2012, compared outcomes among a psychosocial intervention group to usual care controls. One hundred and seven adult child caregivers of persons with dementia were included in the sample (n=54 assigned to the intervention group; n=53 assigned to the usual care control group). Participants were assessed up to eight times; every four months in the first year, then every six months afterwards. The current study focused on the effects of the NYUCI-AC on changes in self-rated health over the study period. Results: Growth curve models found that self-rated health among intervention group and control group caregivers did not differ over the study period. No effect of the intervention on self-rated health emerged over time after controlling for baseline differences in gender and satisfaction with social support. Conclusions: The NYUCI-AC is a multicomponent psychosocial intervention that provides counseling and support to adult child caregivers and did not alter subjective health over time.Item Refiguring old age: shaping scientific research on senescence, 1900-1960.(2009-07) Park, Hyung WookThis dissertation traces the origin and the development of gerontology, the science of aging, in the United States and the United Kingdom. I argue that gerontology began to be formed as a multidisciplinary scientific field in the two countries from the 1900s to the 1950s. Unlike earlier scholars who had thought that the aging of the whole body was caused by the inevitable decline of an unknown critical factor, such as "vital heat," gerontologists of the twentieth century conceived aging as a contigent phenomenon whose rate and mode differed in distinct portions of the body. They also introduced systematic experimental approaches in their investigation which had seldom been employed in the study of aging before the twentieth century. Furthermore, with these new ideas and methodologies, gerontologists established their research field in which scholars from diverse disciplines could work in a cooperative manner, including biologists, physicians, psychologists, and social scientists. Amid the Great Depression, which threatened the very survival of the elderly, these multidisciplinary scholars formed professional societies and research institutes for more organized study of aging. But gerontology followed different paths of development in America and Britain due to their distinctive political and cultural conditions, academic traditions, and leading scholars' social and academic status. While British scientists of aging were struggling with various problems related to funding, professional recognition, and the recruitment of scholars interested in aging, American gerontologists came to have relatively ample and stable sources of financial support and an expanding network of national and local organizations. By analyzing this difference and tracing the beginnings of the new concepts and approaches, this dissertation aims at explaining the birth of a multidisciplinary scientific field within historical contexts.