First Aging Assignment Analysis

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For this first aging assignment, I interviewed an 84 year-old woman in her home. I sat across a lovely woman who greeted me with a genuine smile and who frequently asked if I wanted something to drink or eat. I thanked her and expressed my gratitude for being a part of my research, and that I was looking forward to her responses. I presented her the consent form, she signed it, and we began the interview. I started by asking her questions about her life history, her opinion on the demographic shift in society, and her opinion on the future generations. When I asked her about her life history, I began with simple questions like where she was born, what cohort, and her family relationships. She said she was born in Greenville, SC where she still resides. She is part of the post slavery/segregation generation. She worked when she could to help support her mother and father as well as her siblings. She was married but now she is widowed and she retired in her 50s. One thing I found very interesting about her was her optimism despite the challenges she has faced in her life. She spoke of segregation, …show more content…
A lot of research suggests that stress can lead and/or contribute to many health-related issues. I looked for different articles that looked into how race-related stress affected the health of elderly African-Americans. Talking to my interviewee she talked about things like getting into fights, not making the same pay as the Caucasians she worked with, and being looked down upon. These are similar challenges to those in the study faced. Reading the study done by Utsey, Payne, Jackson, and Jones (2002), I found similarities between their participants and even some of the individuals who were close to the woman I interviewed. There were two similarities that stood out the