Cross-Cultural Research: State of the Art

Cross-cultural research is essential to separate universal processes of aging from culture-specific processes and to understand how culture influences aging. However, there has been little cross-cultural research in social gerontology. The few existing studies support the following theories: (1) Status of the aged tends to decline with modernization. (2) Social activity tends to decline with aging. (3) There is little or no association between life satisfaction and aging. (4) Maintaining social activity tends to maintain life satisfaction. Cross-cultural research could be improved by more comparable measures, more representative samples, more theoretical relevance, and more multivariate analysis. Secondary analysis of existing data and the addition of a few questions to planned surveys are two low-cost ways of increasing cross-cultural research. © 1983, Sage Publications. All rights reserved.

Duke Scholars

Author Erdman B. Palmore Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences, Adult Psychiatry & Psychol ...