I participated in my first conference symposium this afternoon! The topic was late life suicide. Four students from West Virginia University and I presented research in this area. Marnin Heisel, PhD, an assistant professor at The University of Western Ontario, was the discussant and did an excellent job of integrating our research findings and linking them to previous late life suicide research.
For my GSA poster this year, we analyzed the psychometric properties of the COPE scale in older adults. The scale, developed by Carver, Scheier, and Weintraub (1989), measures dispositional coping strategies. We used the COPE in my thesis project and wanted to find out more about how the scale performs in community-dwelling older adults. We found strong evidence for internal reliability and modest evidence for validity in this population (see attachments for further information).
I'm in Atlanta, GA this week-end for the annual Gerontological Society of America conference. All the presentations I've seen so far have been fantastic.
Older adults have a disproportionally high rate of completed suicide as compared to the general population, but relatively little is known about the extent to which coping styles and beliefs serve as protective factors against suicide in this population.
We had a group of community-dwelling older adults complete questionnaires on coping, reasons for living, and suicidal ideation. Some of the findings include:
