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Background: The challenges of delivering interventions for pregnant smokers have been poorly documented. Also, the process of promoting a physical activity intervention for pregnant smokers has not been previously recorded. This study describes the experiences of researchers conducting a randomised controlled trial of physical activity as an aid to smoking cessation during pregnancy and explores how the effectiveness of future interventions could be improved.
Methods: Two focus groups, with independent facilitators, were conducted with six researche rs who had enrolled pregnant smokers in the LEAP trial, provided the interventions, and administered the research measures. Topics included recruitment, retention and how the physical activity intervention for pregnant smokers was delivered and how it was adapted when necessary to suit the women. The focus groups were audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim and subjected to thematic analysis.
Results: Five themes emerged related to barriers or enablers to intervention delivery: (1) nature of the intervention;
(2) personal characteristics of trial participants; (3) practical issues; (4) researchers’ engagement with participants; (5)
training and support needs. Researchers perceived that participants may have been deterred by the intensive and generic nature of the intervention and the need to simultaneously quit smoking and increase physical activity. Women also appeared hampered by pregnancy ailments, social deprivation, and poor mental health. Researchers observed that their status as health professionals was valued by participants but it was challenging to maintain contact with participants. Training and support needs were identified for dealing with pregnant teenagers, participants’ friends and family, and post-natal return to smoking.
Conclusions: Future exercise interventions for smoking cessation in pregnancy may benefit by increased tailoring of the intervention to the characteristics of the women, including their psychological profile, socio-economic background, pregnancy ailments and exercise preferences. Delivering an effective physical activity intervention for smoking cessation in pregnancy may require more comprehensive training for those delivering the intervention, particularly with regard to dealing with teenage smokers and smokers’ friends and family, as well as for avoiding post-natal return to smoking.
The policy review is part of the project EQualCare: Alone but connected? Digital (in)equalities in care work and generational relationships among older people living alone, a three-year international project involving four countries: Finland, Germany, Latvia and Sweden. EQualCare interrogates inequalities by gender, cultural and socio-economic background between countries, with their different demographics and policy backgrounds. As a first step into empirical analysis, the policy review aims to set the stage for a better understanding of, and policy development on, the intersections of digitalisation with intergenerational care work and care relationships of older people living alone in Germany.
The policy review follows a critical approach, in which the problems policy documents address are not considered objective entities, but rather discursively produced knowledge that renders visible some parts of the problem which is to be solved as other possible perspectives are simultaneously excluded. Twenty publicly available documents were studied to analyse the processes in which definitions of care work and digital (in)equalities are circulated, translated and negotiated between the different levels of national government, regional governments and municipalities as well as other agencies in Germany.
The policy review consists of two parts: a background chapter providing information on the social structure of Germany, including the historical development of Germany after the Second World War, its political structure, information on the demographic situation with a focus on the 60+ age group, and the income of this age group. In addition, the background presents the structure of work and welfare, the organisation of care for old people, and the state of digitalisation in Germany. The analysis chapter includes a description of the method used as well as an overview of the documents chosen and analysed. The focus of this chapter is on the analysis of official documents that deal with the interplay of living alone in old age, care, and digitalisation.
The analysis identified four themes: firstly, ageing is framed largely as a challenge to society, whereas digitalisation is framed as a potential way to tackle social challenges, such as an ageing society. Secondly, challenges of ageing, such as need of care, are set at the individual level, requiring people to organise their care within their own families and immediate social networks, with state support following a principle of subsidiarity. Thirdly, voluntary peer support provides the basis for addressing digital support needs and strategies. Publications by lobby organisations highlight the important work done by voluntary peer support for digital training and the benefits this approach has; they also draw attention to the over-reliance on this form of unpaid support and call for an increase in professional support in ensuring all older people are supported in digital life. Fourthly, ageing as a hinderance to participation in digital life is seen as an interim challenge among younger old people already online.
In summary, the analysis shows that the connection between ageing and digitalisation remains a marginal topic in current politics. The focus on older people merely as a potential group at risk of being left behind implies a deficit perspective on ageing and a homogenising of a large and diverse age group. Lessons learnt from the pandemic should not be interpreted in a one-sided way, by merely acknowledging the increasing number of (older) people moving online, but by acknowledging intersecting inequalities that mitigate social participation.
Die Lebensphase Alter befindet sich in einem fundamentalen demografischen, sozialen und kulturellen Wandel. Sie ist dabei ambivalent: Einerseits ist sie nicht mehr vorrangig eine Phase des Rückzugs, sondern kann aktiv gestaltet werden. Andererseits ist die Lebensphase durch krisenhafte Erlebnisse, wie etwa den Austritt aus dem Erwerbsleben, Verlust des Partners/der Partnerin oder gesundheitliche Veränderungen gekennzeichnet. Lernen wird umso wichtiger, als es Selbstbestimmung und Aktivität unterstützen und gleichzeitig kritische Lebensereignisse bewältigen helfen kann. In diesem Beitrag wird auf Lernen als erfahrungsreflexiver Prozess geschaut und dargestellt, wie dieser in unterschiedlichen informellen Bildungssettings für ältere Menschen stattfinden kann.
How can older adults participate equally in digitisation processes across Europe, and what inclusive research strategies are needed? This Zine summarizes findings from a “Research Innovation Lab on Ageing in a Digital Age”, funded by the VolkswagenStiftung, aiming to bring together 29 docs and postdocs anchored in 26 different disciplines coming from 11 countries, at all stages of their work, to address cutting edge questions relating to ageing in a digital age. Five groups worked together over five days in Frankfurt, Germany, in July 2023 in a creative and interactive hackathon, specific to developing non-technical solutions to social issues of this topic. Moreover, four distinguished experts presented keynote speeches and proposals from various conceptual, methodological and empirical perspectives.
The paper reports on research that investigates older men's care practices and how their caring for others opens new ways of exploring the intersections of aging, gender, and care work. Using the concept caring masculinities as a sensitizing concept, the onus is on exploring patterns of power, interdependence, and relationality within men's care practices. Aging masculinities often remain constructed around paid-for occupational work (in opposition to unpaid care work) despite the transition into retirement. Little work exists on how caring is at work in later life potentially transforming gender relations and enacted masculinities. Moreover, much of the research on aging masculinities have not considered the expansiveness of retirement and the discourses as well as subjective expectations around the activity in later life that create an uncertain terrain of socioculturally structured mandates to be navigated. This paper draws on data from two qualitative interview studies conducted with retired men in England and Germany, in which the role of caregiving emerged as an inductive theme in their narratives. The paper makes a specific contribution to developing empirical and theoretical knowledge of caring masculinities and power relations by providing insights on men's trajectories into caring, and how they make sense of their caring for and about others.
Das partizipative Forschungsprojekt "Allein aber vernetzt? Digitale (Un)gleichheiten und soziale Netzwerke bei alleinlebenden Menschen" beschäftigte sich von 2021-2024 mit Alleinlebenden im Alter, ihren Beziehungsnetzwerken und der Frage welche Rolle digitale Geräte und die Digitalisierung aller Lebensbereiche in diesem Zusammenhang spielen. Durch die Zusammenarbeit mit einer Gruppe von Ko-Forschenden in Frankfurt und Egelsbach stand die Perspektive der Gruppe im Mittelpunkt.
Im vorliegenden White Paper wird das Projekt sowie zentrale Ergebnisse und die erarbeiteten Handlungsempfehlungen der deutschen Teilstudie vorgestellt. Diese wurde vom BMBF gefördert und ist Teil des europäischen Verbundprojektes "EQualCare - Alone but connected? Digital (in)equalities in care work and generational relationships among older people living alone" der Joint Programming Initiative (JPI) “More Years Better Lives”.