UNDERSTANDING PERSON-PLACE TRANSACTIONS IN NEIGHBOURHOODS: A QUALITATIVE-GEOSPATIAL APPROACH

Abstract

AbstractEmerging research regarding aging in context reveals much about neighbourhood characteristics that relate to aging adults’ health, participation and inclusion; however, in-depth information about the nature of person-place relationships is lacking. Shifting away from previous conceptualizations of place as static, a transactional perspective considers place as inseparable from the person, each shaping the other through complex, ongoing transactions. The inter-woven nature of person and place highlights the need to use methods that can examine this relationship in situ and explore meanings derived from places. Participatory geospatial methods (i.e. methods that involve the participant in collecting geospatial data) can capture situated details about place that are not verbalized during interviews or otherwise discerned, and qualitative methods can explore interpretations, both helping to generate deep understandings of the relationships between person and place. This presentation argues for applying qualitative-participatory geospatial approaches to this area of study and describes an innovative methodology. A study exploring how neighbourhood and person transact to shape a sense of social connectedness in older adults provided the basis from which we developed a combined qualitative-participatory geospatial methodology. Methods included global positioning system (GPS) tracking followed by map-based interviews, narrative interviews, and go-along interviews, with attention to integrating spatial and other forms of data during analysis. Findings indicate the unique understandings that each method contributes, the strengths and limitations of integrating geospatial with qualitative data, and the potential for this methodology to generate knowledge about person-place transactions that can inform practice, policy and research to promote older adults’ well-being.