“You get old. You get invisible”: Social isolation and the challenge of communicating with aging women

ABSTRACT

Social isolation is a problem facing many older women. Isolation can contribute to poor health as adults age without social support. Increased and tailored communication offers service organizations more opportunities to provide social support to these adults. This research examines perceptions of aging to explore communication behaviors, barriers, and opportunities for improved communication and service provision for aging women. Using data from focus groups and interviews, this study finds that participants from community organizations rely on word of mouth and traditional media to communicate with their aging constituents, despite opportunities to use digital communication and to develop communication plans for this population.

KEYWORDS:

• Aging
• focus groups
• health
• interviews
• social isolation
• women

Notes

¹ The largest session was in Des Moines, Iowa, with 32 participants, and the smallest session was in Chariton, Iowa, with four participants. The sessions had an average of 17 participants (M = 17.06) and a median of 18 participants. See Appendix A for the number of participants per focus group.

² All focus group attendees agreed to participate in the research and signed informed consent forms prior to the sessions. This research received Institutional Review Board approval from the researchers’ university.

³ These data is part of a larger project focusing on information and technology use of nonprofit organizations, thus our focus on recruiting these participants specifically. The inclusion criteria for recruitment included whether the focus group participant worked at a nonprofit organization at the time of the focus group sessions when they agreed to be contacted for a follow-up interview.