Health interview surveys are a useful tool for defining the health status of a respondent as well as what health risks may be associated with the respondent’s well-being. The purpose of the project is for you to obtain information about the amount and type of illness one community-based elder must live with, and if the elder’s overall health condition is perceived as disabling, limiting, or ordinary. The objective is to personalize the issue of aging and health.  Through this interview you might want to also investigate the role of the family in determining well-being and the importance of the family in the delivery of primary health care.  Such added questioning & discussion is a common part of the "conversation" you are likely to have with the elder.

This assignment has one principle objective: To have you become familiar with ordinary health impairments associated with aging and community-based elders.  The health interview is designed unearth the ordinariness of physiological and biological aging.  The interview is designed to address what illness conditions become common and what medication is currently used. As you ask (and listen), you are welcome to probe and talk with the interviewee about the personal meaning of an illness.

In your research paper, summarize the interview experience, and determine if your thing the elder is "aging successfully" or "aging normally" rather than "aging pathologically."  What leads you to the conclusion you reached?  Was the elder physically limited but socially participatory? Was the elder well but show some evidence of poor well-being?

The Health Interview takes about 10 minutes to administer.