June's troubled transition: adjustment to residential care for older adults with dementia.

In research on dementia care and housing transitions, only rarely are residents themselves present as active informants. This is a costly omission, inasmuch as manifestations of dementia, perceptions of care settings, and residents' experience of such transitions are both complex and highly variable. In this article, drawn from a larger study of the social organization of care in residential care/assisted living (RC/AL), we develop a detailed, ethnographic narrative that combines first-person reflections by, and observational data on, a single resident--a focal case.

Narrative interviewing: process and benefits in teaching about aging and the life course.

Narrative interviewing (also termed qualitative interviewing) is a valid and vivid way to apply perspectives and concepts in gerontology to individual lives. As such it is widely used as a research method. However, teachers in many fields also assign interview projects for students, as supplemental assignments in aging-related courses.

Implications of welfare reform on the elderly: a case study of provider, advocate, and consumer perspectives.

Whereas many studies of welfare reform have focused on effects on children and families, little research has examined the implications of welfare reform for the elderly. This case study incorporates interviews with service providers for the aging, members of advocacy organizations, and two focus groups of older consumers conducted in the multi-ethnic urban community of San Francisco. Study findings suggest that welfare reform has had both direct and indirect effects on the elderly and their services in the study community.