Visible Strengths: Older Women’s Resilience in the Context of Age Related Adversity
Abstract
The objective of the qualitative study was to describe older women’s resilience according to women’s interpretations of their experiences and their understandings of resilience and adversity. The study combined constructivist grounded theory methodology and feminist PAR to create new knowledge about older women’s resilience. Both qualitative methodologies contributed to the study in unique, yet equally important ways. Constructivist grounded theory involved the use of systematic data collection and analysis methods to construct a theory about older women’s resilience and FPAR provided a framework of ethical principles and bridged the construction of new knowledge with social justice oriented action. Drawing from researcher reflexivity, this study explains how every aspect of the research process, including the implementation of constructivist grounded theory methods, was guided by FPAR principles. The constructivist grounded theory created from the researcher’s interpretations of participants’ experiences and the recommendations women formulated during the interviews and focus groups informed the action component of this study that is essential in FPAR. Constructivist grounded theory methodology guided the collection and analysis of data from interviews with 25 women ages 55-73 and from two focus groups. Intersectionality and critical feminist gerontology served as theoretical frameworks for examining the diversity of women’s experiences.
The researcher interpreted women’s reflections on their experiences and identified a core category and a constellation of distinct yet interrelated categories, sub-categories and themes. The core category that described the experiences of the women in the study and their understanding of resilience was learning and cultivating wisdom in response to change. Study findings represented women’s diverse experiences and interpretations of change. Women in the study described how their resilience was related to distinct types of change, including identity related change, crisis, loss and significant experiences, how their learning has transformed into wisdom over the course of their lives, and how their resilience is bolstered by sources of scaffolding. The implications for practice described in the study are informed by participants’ recommendations and include valuing the significance of the meaning older women ascribe to their experiences and developing programs that provide sources of scaffolding identified by women in the study.
Description
Keywords
Social Work
Citation
Gulbrandsen, C. (2017). Visible Strengths: Older Women’s Resilience in the Context of Age Related Adversity (Doctoral thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca. doi:10.11575/PRISM/28645