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The Worcester Area Project on Aging differsfrom other undergraduate research centers in its emphasis on basic research and its exclusive focus on an annual survey of the local elderly population; it differs fundamentally from graduate-level area studies programs in its involvement of undergraduates in research. These differences presented unique challenges during the two-year pilot period of the Project. After describing our experiences we identify several lessons about combining teaching and research at an undergraduate college. The lessons draw attention to problems of student recruitment, time constraints and the breadth of student involvement, and students' preparation in methods and statistics, as well as the educational value offaculty-student collaboration.

This study examined the relationship between aging and religious participation, focusing on changes in older people's formal participation in church life, informal or private religious practices, and attitudes towards participation in the church. Survey data from a random sample of older persons in a medium-sized northeastern city included both objective and subjective measures of health. Contrary to earlier studies which relied on subjective health as the sole indicator of health status, multiple regression analyses showed that health, especially as measured by health-related, functional limitations, serves an important mediating role. Older people experience greater functional limitations and, in turn, are less likely to engage in various church activities. These findings have important implications for the activity-disengagement debate within social gerontology and also for the concern in the sociology of religion with the role of religion in older people's lives.

This paper uses a criticism of “objectivistic” approaches to aging and identity as a vehicle for a phenomenological rethinking of those topics. This phenomenological approach to “identity-in-the-world” as it is experienced in everyday life leads necessarily to a theory of the temporal limits of that experience in the aging process; that is, a theory of identity, properly understood, is already a theory of aging. It is concluded that this approach overcomes the parallel problems of objectivism versus subjectivism and biologism versus sociologism, demanding a rethinking of conceptions of human nature that have predominated in social science.

This paper treats time and space as two central perceptual categories that are disrupted when an older person confronts new vision loss. Qualitative research findings are presented, describing (1) the “invisible,” “unknowable,” and “hostile” relationships to objects and space often experienced by older persons with recent blindness; and (2) the consequent disruption of their previous ordering of time. Such challenges to these perceptual categories force newly blind older persons to question their ability to manipulate the environment and to participate in social relationships. Consequently, these perceptual disruptions make them vulnerable to both self-imposed tentativeness and externally generated labeling processes that identify them as incompetent.

With few exceptions, previous studies of the relationship between age and religious participation have either ignored the nonorganizational aspects of participation or have used a single measure of participation. Following an approach adopted in studies of the structure of well-being, we investigate the multidimensional conceptualization of religious participation. The results demonstrate that (a) the empirical definitions for the dimensions of participation are invariant over age groups, (b) there is a convergence in individuals' organizational and nonorganizational participation in the later stages of the life cycle, and (c) the dimensions of religious involvement become more distinct and determinant with increasing age.

What has stigma to do with justice? On the face of it, the answer is obvious: little if anything. Stigma involves situations where one individual or group treats another individual or group as less than fully human. Justice involves the fair distribution of outcomes and the procedures by which distributions are arranged. The conceptual overlap looks slight, at first blush. It seems hardly surprising, then, that scholars rarely mention the two terms in the same breath except, perhaps, to note that societies stigmatize some lawbreakers or to comment on the injustice of some stigmas.