What Do We Know? Not much: The State of Leisure and Aging Research

KEYWORDS: Aging, gerontology, research, collaboration The conclusion was clear and without equivocation: "Cardiac rehabilitation exercise training consistently improves objective measures of exercise tolerance, without significant cardiovascular complications or other adverse outcomes. " That statement, part of a report on cardiac rehabilitation (Agency for Health Care Policy and Research, 1995), was followed by support from 114 scientific reports. Such certainty in a research based manuscript is rare. Most researchers hesitate to present their findings in such clear, comprehensible terms. Caveats and caution typically preclude certainty and clarity. The somewhat surprising invitation to contribute an essay to this special issue coincided with the reading of the cardiac rehabilitation report. The definitude of its conclusions raised a question I have been struggling with and one that forms the basis of this essay: what do we know in the area of leisure with a similar degree of certainty and support? Rather than look at that question for all leisure research I decided to focus on the area with which I am most familiar: leisure research related to aging and older people. Since Robert Kleemeier's groundbreaking book entitled Aging and Leisure (1961) what body of research has developed allowing us to make bold statements supported by compelling evidence? The answer is as disappointing as it is simple: not as much as one would hope! We probably "know" that activity is in some sense good for people by contributing to the quality of life. However, for every article concluding one thing there seems to be a contradictory piece concluding something else. Our collection of bits and pieces of information still fails to give even a hint of a mosaic. Why is this the case? Why are we not able to provide conclusive answers? Is it because 39 years is simply too little time to address the complex questions? Well maybe, but there may be other reasons. 1. We are not asking the right questions. A friend recently told me a story about visiting a small restaurant in Texas and asking his waitress what the soup du jour was. She left to find out and returned several minutes later with the answer: "it is the soup of the day. " The questions we ask dictate the answers we get and the questions we are asking today are not that different from those we were asking a decade ago. 2. We don't put the best team together. When I was a growing up in New Jersey the mantra "break up the Yankees" was common and ardent. The Yankees won then, and now, because they had the best players and remained focused on winning. We have not yet created winning research teams. Rather than cultivating a team, with a shared agenda, chipping away at questions in a consistent and systematic way, we tend to change directions and affiliations as opportunities arise. Constraints due to space and time also limit opportunities for collaboration. To paraphrase Thoreau: the person who goes alone can start today but the person who travels with another must wait until the other is ready. 3. The funding to conduct significant research is not present. Examination of any issue of The Gerontologist or the Journal of Gerontolgy yields a rich array of manuscripts, most sharing at least one characteristic: they are the result of funded research. Funding comes from a variety of sources, including: The National Institute of Aging, the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research, the Health Care Financing Administration, the National Institute of Nursing Research, and the Administration on Aging. In contrast, aging research by leisure researchers is often unfunded, unless it is part of a larger project. While funding will not necessarily drive research questions, the availability of dollars based on foundation and agency priorities does provide an umbrella for a continuing line of research. 4. We are borrowers rather than owners. Leisure research has always used concepts developed in other fields and shaped them to embrace leisure questions. …