School of Nursing, Nanjing University of Chinese Medicine, Nanjing, PR China.
PLoS One. 2024 Aug 12;19(8):e0308401. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0308401. eCollection 2024.
Social participation of older adults is a crucial component of China's aged care services and an important strategy for actively addressing the aging population. Analyzing policy texts on older people's social participation can inform future policy formulation and the development of relevant programs.
This study aims to quantitatively analyze the transformation of China's social participation policies for older people from 1999 to 2023, employing institutional network analysis and policy text analysis.
A two-dimensional policy analysis framework was constructed based on the perspective of "policy tools and social participation stages." Using Rost Content Mining 6.0 and Nvivo 11.0 Plus software, 55 national-level policy texts were coded. Structural analysis of policy-issuing subjects and topic words was conducted to visualize the findings.
The analysis revealed that the policy-issuing subjects demonstrated strong authority but weak coordination, with a lack of communication and cooperation across subjects. The use of policy tools was imbalanced, with an over-reliance on supply-type tools and insufficient use of demand-type tools. Additionally, the lack of effective policy tools to support various social participation stages has limited policy implementation.
With technological advancement and changing needs of the elderly population, there is a need for a more systematic and forward-looking top-level design of elderly social participation policies: accelerating the systematization and precision of technological elements in policies for elderly social participation, integrating social organizations via technological platforms to mobilize diverse stakeholder engagement, and addressing the digital divide between the elderly and new technologies is imperative.
老年人的社会参与是中国老年护理服务的重要组成部分，也是积极应对人口老龄化的重要策略。分析老年人社会参与政策文本可以为未来的政策制定和相关项目的发展提供信息。
本研究旨在运用制度网络分析和政策文本分析方法，对 1999 年至 2023 年中国老年人社会参与政策的演变进行定量分析。
构建了基于“政策工具与社会参与阶段”视角的二维政策分析框架。使用 Rost Content Mining 6.0 和 Nvivo 11.0 Plus 软件对 55 份国家级政策文本进行编码。通过结构分析政策制定主体和主题词，可视化研究结果。
分析结果表明，政策制定主体权威性强，但协调性弱，主体之间缺乏沟通与合作。政策工具的使用不平衡，供给型工具使用过多，需求型工具使用不足。此外，缺乏有效的政策工具来支持各个社会参与阶段，限制了政策的实施。
随着技术的进步和老年人口需求的变化，需要对老年人社会参与政策进行更系统、更前瞻性的顶层设计：加快老年人社会参与政策中技术要素的系统化和精准化，通过技术平台整合社会组织，调动各方利益相关者的参与，解决老年人与新技术之间的数字鸿沟问题。
