Introduction

Gerontology is multidisciplinary because many disciplines have important contributions to make in extending our knowledge of the human ageing process. This can be interpreted in two ways:

• Many established disciplines and areas of study make important contributions to the understanding of ageing.
• Researchers from different disciplines and areas of study work together to develop and refine theory and to better understand different aspects of ageing.

As a social scientist, I am discussing primarily the social sciences, but acknowledge the obvious contributions of the life sciences and the humanities. There are the traditionally accepted academic social science disciplines (anthropology, economics, political science etc.) and applied disciplines or multi-disciplines with social science components such as business administration, geriatric medicine, social policy etc. Gerontology is one of the second set of these quasi-disciplines.

All gerontologists take a first degree in something else. Most European gerontologists took a first degree in a social science and then did a PhD in a multi-disciplinary area. To acquire an academic post in the UK it is necessary to work outside the field of gerontology involving teaching, research and administration. Working with colleagues from other disciplines is rewarding and stimulating, although working with other social scientists is usually easier than working with non-social-science disciplines. Working with colleagues from other countries can be enriching and challenging making it easier to understand what is going on one’s own country and why, through comparison with different values and attitudes in other developed countries.

Each discipline or area of study has its own developmental history, its own traditions, its own perspectives, its own favoured topics of study, its own methodologies and, since publication is the name of the game, its own professional journals. Working together, researchers need to take account of all this. There has to be something in the endeavour for each involved discipline.

The combination of disciplines should be defined by the nature of the research question. Some disciplines have more obvious links than others. Social policy, geography, economics and demography might be the basis for a timely study of ageing in this age of international migration. There is no doubt that multi-disciplinary approaches can enrich knowledge and lead to more developed theory.

Some funding agencies make a point of encouraging multidisciplinary research. However, there are disincentives. Multidisciplinary research is likely to be more expensive (more researchers and increased data collection costs). Disincentives are also built into current university structures. Departments are in competition with one another in terms of the RAE. Concerns exist about leadership, status, overheads, authorship and choice of target journals.

British university departments named after a specific discipline are more likely to achieve high scores in teaching and research assessment procedures, than those of the newer multi-disciplinary areas of study. The Education Correspondent of The Times, on the 23rd of August 2006 this year, reported that “universities are insisting that pupils take traditional subjects if they want to be considered for degree courses. Quote: “Those applying with A levels in subjects such as media studies or health and social care would rule themselves out.” (italics added)

This suggests that multidisciplinary status may not be well understood and that assessors also tend to be guided by the criteria of their first discipline. It is much more straightforward to play safe, submit a research proposal in one’s own discipline, from one’s own department, school or research centre, to a funding agency which funds work in a particular discipline.

An aspect of inter- or multi-disciplinary research which is often overlooked is the interface between researchers and social policy commissioners or funders of research. These groups come to the enterprise with different understandings of the social research process. From basic value orientations to the dissemination and publication of findings this area is fraught with potential conflict. For example, the social scientist’s overt objectives are the understanding of a research problem and the extension of knowledge. The policy-maker’s objectives are strategic and the aim is to solve social problems. The timescale of the social scientist is defined by the demands of the scientific question and the methodology selected as appropriate; the policy-maker’s timescale is defined by political expediency.

The professional contexts of each group are also in stark contrast: independence and creativity on the one hand, agency loyalty and respect for authority on the other; open debate and critical discussion versus confidentiality and closed evaluation. Pressures to reduce costs by reducing sample size, dispensing with control groups or comparisons in different contexts reduce scientific acceptability and contribution.

In this age of globalisation, gerontologists have moved into the area of multi-disciplinary cross-national research. It is generally felt that international research is best accomplished by academics from different countries getting together at the outset and designing the research project in collaboration. Frequent face-to-face meetings as well as other regular communication between the various research teams are essential.

Not only must we deal with the differences between disciplines, but we are faced with the fact that the same discipline in a different country may look slightly unfamiliar. There can be a feeling approaching cognitive dissonance, as non-UK-colleagues see common areas differently and refer to authors and authorities, often from literature in their own language, with which one is unfamiliar.

Research has been dominated by the wealthy countries of the north and the English language. This has led to hegemony of perspective, which is only now being addressed as research becomes more reflexive and self-critical. In other words, the corpus of our knowledge is skewed towards the rich countries of Europe and the New World.

It can be disconcerting to find that even the definition of old age or older people, is not the same in all contexts. Gerontologists in the UK study “older people” and “ageing” and have expanded down to at least 50, with pre-retirement studies, menopausal and post-menopausal studies, mid-life crises etc. Perhaps ageing will assume its proper place as part of human development and the family, thus integrating older people into the mainstream as just “people” who have been alive longer than other people.

Typically statistics are collected and presented with those aged 65+ shown as a category. In order to include all retirees irrespective of gender some countries define “older people” as everyone over 60, which raises new problems. As cross-national research increases and countries with lower life expectancies and low levels of economic participation are added to the equation, 55 or 50 becomes the cut off point. This can mean that research samples and national statistics are not comparable. Older people in one context are different from those in another. Are same age samples comparable if life expectancy is 15 years lower in one country than in another?

In less developed countries with high levels of the population who are non-literate, such as much of Africa and Asia, and where older people cannot tell you how old they are and records and statistics are scant, the definition of old age is less precise and more likely to be related to life stage or physical capacity, such as grandparenthood or no longer being able to fetch one’s own drinking water. The first of these can happen in one’s early thirties and the second may not occur until the mid-eighties. So the definition here refers to a social status rather than a chronological age. Cultural attitudes to health affect self assessment. In some countries a stoical attitude is valued in others ill health is expected as part of the ageing process.

Semantics and translation are problematic, even between countries with the same language, such as British English, American English and Indian English. This is more difficult with different languages and more difficult again between different language families. Translating instruments to be used with different groups is not straightforward and needs meticulous work and a lot of time.

Cultural differences can also intervene. For example, some cultures do not have a word for loneliness. Some cultures have taboos on talking about specific topics, for example, death. Most kin-ship systems outside the European culture areas have different ways of naming kin relationships. Cultural differences can also differ in terms of research management and accounting. Politics can have micro effects in terms of topics which cannot be questioned or macro effects in terms of disruptions which make the completion of projects impossible.

I called this paper “Putting the pieces together.” That makes it sound like a jigsaw puzzle, but the reality is much more complex than that. Putting the pieces together is just the first part of the endeavour: choosing reliable partners from other disciplines, designing compatible methodologies, collecting data in different languages and contexts, analysing the data from different perspectives and publishing the results. The difficult part is that whatever your previous experience, however meticulously you design the project and however much consultation goes into that design, the outcomes are never assured. A better metaphor than the jigsaw puzzle might be parenthood. Getting it started is exciting and as time goes on the challenges are stimulating and often rewarding, there can be tears and exultation, you are never entirely sure what the outcome is going to be, but however demanding and whatever happens it is enjoyable and ultimately worthwhile and you learn more than you ever expected to learn.