Empirical methods in ageing research: Recent developments and upcoming trends

Europe is graying. This development becomes visible in our everyday lives, be it when we look at the person sitting next to us in a café, when we read the stories presented in newspapers, or when we listen to discussions on the situation of pension schemes. Researchers from various disciplines, e.g. sociology, political science, and medical science, observed this trend for some time now. To study what ageing means for societies and individuals, those researchers developed and adapted a rich array of research methods. Knowing about these research methods helps us to pick the most useful and effective way to answer our questions about old age and population ageing.

Nowadays, it is hard to gain an overview of empirical methods in ageing research. The field of ageing research is well-developed and diverse, which makes it difficult for any one person to spontaneously list all the methods used and to explain their advantages and disadvantages. The few overview books that exist were mainly written in the 1990s, which means that they cannot provide a concise description of the current situation either. For example, they cannot sufficiently describe recent developments and upcoming trends, such as the use of Sequence Analysis, Bayesian Modeling, or Qualitative Comparative Analysis. This contribution strives to fill this lacuna.

Our contribution describes and analyzes the use of empirical methods in ageing research during the last 2 decades. It traces the upcoming of new empirical methods in ageing research and the adaptation of existing methods to the needs of ageing research. It, moreover, studies for which topics, scientific disciplines, and kinds of research questions each method is most useful. Finally, this research project identifies upcoming trends in empirical methods in ageing research and briefly discusses how those trends could develop in the future.