SUCCESSFUL AGING 2

Abstract

The topic of successful aging has become more and more prevalent over the past fifty years.

Social scientist in the United States have contributed to the discussion significantly, but

successful aging may be manifesting itself differently in other cultures. An interview was

conducted with a woman in her late fifties who was born and raised in communist Poland and

emigrated to West Germany in middle adulthood. The cultural nuances of this individuals

experience in the East and the West were explored and to what extent they may have influenced

her aging/developmental trajectory. While the exposure to the cultures of both the East and the

West have guided her move to the West, the question to what extent successful aging is mediated

by culture remains largely unanswered by this case study. It is concluded that when inspecting

individual trajectories, culture, as it relates to values shared among groups of people in a similar

geographical area, may not be as important as the culture of ones personal upbringing.

> 250 words

These are the basic components of an abstract in any discipline:

1) Motivation/problem statement: Why do we care about the problem? What practical,

scientific, theoretical or artistic gap is your research filling?

2) Methods/procedure/approach: What did you actually do to get your results? (e.g. analyzed 3

novels, completed a series of 5 oil paintings, interviewed 17 students)

3) Results/findings/product: As a result of completing the above procedure, what did you

learn/invent/create?

4) Conclusion/implications: What are the larger implications of your findings, especially for the

problem/gap identified in step 1?