Wahl Hans-Werner, Weisman Gerald D
German Center for Research on Aging, University of Heidelberg, Germany.
Gerontologist. 2003 Oct;43(5):616-27. doi: 10.1093/geront/43.5.616.
Over the past four decades the environmental context of aging has come to play an important role in gerontological theory, research, and practice. Environmental gerontology (EG)--focused on the description, explanation, and modification or optimization of the relation between elderly persons and their sociospatial surroundings--has emerged as a subfield in its own right. The aim of this article is to reflect on the historical, empirical, and theoretical development of recent EG, following Parmelee and Lawton's diagnosis from 1990 that there is a need to move the field beyond its current languishing state. From a historical perspective, EG has clearly played an important and successful role within the gerontology enterprise in terms of explicit consideration of the sociophysical environment in theory and research. A literature analysis of empirical studies supports the view that research has continued on a substantial quantitative level during the 1990s. Findings of these research studies address the whole diversity of classic EG research questions, but mostly in the sense of replication and extension. In terms of theoretical discussion, our analysis leads to the insight that EG may be described as a field high in conceptual aspiration ("world views"), but low with regard to making research and application-productive use of its theoretical achievements.
在过去的四十年里，老龄化的环境背景在老年学理论、研究和实践中发挥了重要作用。环境老年学（EG）——专注于描述、解释以及改变或优化老年人与其社会空间环境之间的关系——已成为一个独立的子领域。本文旨在反思近期环境老年学的历史、实证和理论发展，这是继帕尔梅利和劳顿在1990年做出的诊断之后，即需要推动该领域摆脱目前的停滞状态。从历史角度来看，环境老年学在老年学事业中显然发挥了重要且成功的作用，即在理论和研究中明确考虑社会物理环境。对实证研究的文献分析支持了这样一种观点，即在20世纪90年代，研究在相当数量的层面上持续进行。这些研究的结果涉及经典环境老年学研究问题的全部分类，但大多是在重复和扩展的意义上。在理论讨论方面，我们的分析得出这样的见解，即环境老年学可以被描述为一个概念抱负（“世界观”）很高，但在将其理论成果用于研究和应用方面成效较低的领域。
