Mining the Research

> Read the entire report at http://www.governance.qub.ac.uk/olderpeople.html

Following is an introduction to this report written by Atlantic.

In Northern Ireland, Atlantic discovered that many of the organisations working on behalf of older people felt their work was being seriously hampered by a lack of good research. According to these organisations, it wasn’t that good research on older adults didn’t exist. The problem was the information was scattered throughout a multitude of surveys that no one had ever been able to collate and analyse as a whole.

This need for better research on which to base programme and policy decisions was occurring at a time in Northern Ireland society when the debate on social needs and poverty threatened to omit a focus on older adults, due to a prevalent belief that this group was not widely affected by poverty.

To address this problem, The Atlantic Philanthropies commissioned a study from the Institute of Governance, Public Policy and Social Research at Queen’s University, Belfast. The purpose of the study was to pull together all of the relevant research data on older adults; subject the results to a fresh, comprehensive, scientific analysis; and then present the findings as a coherent whole.

The research effort resulted in a series of five groundbreaking reports that not only documented the true depth and breadth of the social challenges facing older people in Northern Ireland, but brought the three following points to light:

• A significant portion of older people faced substantial social difficulties that include poverty and disability.
• Many of the assumptions and stereotypes about older adults were based on questionable data and needed to be revisited.
• The true extent of poverty among older people had been understated in many studies because the methodologies used in the studies were flawed.

This report has played a substantial role in shaping the direction of our Ageing Programme in Northern Ireland and the work of our Ageing grantees.