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Some Pleasures and Pitfalis of Working with Older Research Assistants
Author(s) -
Mayhew C.,
Swindell R.
Publication year - 1996
Publication title -
australian journal on ageing
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.63
H-Index - 34
eISSN - 1741-6612
pISSN - 0726-4240
DOI - 10.1111/j.1741-6612.1996.tb00022.x
Subject(s) - focus (optics) , work (physics) , quality (philosophy) , psychology , focus group , medical education , sociology , gerontology , medicine , engineering , epistemology , mechanical engineering , philosophy , physics , anthropology , optics
This paper reports on the pleasures and pitfalls experienced by two academic researchers who recruited senior Australians as Research Assistants (RAs) to work on two different projects. The focus of this paper is on the activities carried out by the RAs, not on the projects. All RAs were able to establish excellent rapport with older study participants, they obtained high quality data, and were reliable and enthusiastic workers. It is argued that the older population represents a valuable source of expertise which could be used effectively by researchers .