Grant Supports Research of Risk, Resiliancy Factors for Women Years 65 and Older

Dr. Jacqueline Wallen, associate professor with the Department of Family Science, was awarded a grant to explore the risk and resiliency factors in the life stories of elderly women. The research will be based upon interviews conducted by her students over the past four years.

Dr. Wallen hopes to better understand how the factors of gender, race and age enhance or detract from the health and well-being of women ages 65 and older.

"I think the major significance of this work is that it integrates a developmental approach into the new and developing field of feminist gerontology, focusing on risk and resiliency factors for older women, particularly older minority women," Wallen told The Healthy Turtle.

The $2,000 grant was awarded from the University of Maryland's Qualitative Methods Research Interest Group (QRIG), a joint project of the Consortium on Race, Gender and Ethnicity (CRGE) and the Maryland Population Research Center (MPRC).

For this project, Dr. Wallen will conduct a qualitative analysis of life story interviews with 30 African American and 30 white women who are 65 years and older. These interviews were conducted by Dr. Wallen’s FMSC 432 course, Adult Development and Aging in Families. The analysis will be conducted during the first half of the summer of 2010, and Dr. Wallen will present her findings to QRIG in the 2010-2011 academic year.

In granting the award, QRIG praised the interdisciplinary nature of the project and its excellent job of framing the project using the concept of intersectionality - a feminist approach to the study of women's lives that emphasizes the effects on women of multiple different but overlapping identities or social categories.

Dr. Wallen's proposed project also has the potential to result in several publications, and to create a new line of transformative research for a well-established scholar at the University of Maryland.

Congrats, Dr. Wallen!