In 1999, the Centre for Policy on Ageing (CPA) published Biographical Interviews: the link between research and practice edited by Joanna Bornat and Involving Older People in Research. ‘An amateur doing the work of a professional?’ edited by Sheila Peace, the first two papers in the Representation of Older People in Ageing Research series, a joint venture from the Centre for Ageing and Biographical Studies (CABS) at the Open University and CPA. The short reports are based on seminars co-hosted by CABS and CPA to examine issues of current methodological innovation in research on ageing.

The seminars provide a forum for researchers on ageing to present and discuss their work, to debate methods, and take from the debate ideas to research ageing in new ways. As one would expect the seminar topics are wide ranging and cover sometimes neglected but critical areas in research projects.

The reports emerging from the seminars are designed to share with a wider audience some of the challenges that researchers encounter, and identify the common themes in the quest to understand and ‘re-think’ ageing and old age. Most of all they demonstrate the value of collaboration and a ‘conversation’ across disciplines.

The authors span a range of disciplines including anthropology, sociology, psychology and landscape architecture and demonstrate the varied approaches taken in making observations. While the authors concentrate principally on the process of making observations in the research setting, they also discuss the research context and results achieved by observation methods.

Other reports published in the series are:

• Language and Later Life: issues, methods and representations (eds) Rebecca L. Jones and John Percival
• Recruitment and Sampling: qualitative research with older people (ed.) Caroline Holland
• Everyday Living in Later Life (ed.) Bill Bytheway
• Writing Old Age (ed.) Julia Johnson

Further publications on the way are Age-Old Prejudices: research with older people in a discriminatory world (eds) Richard Ward and Bill Bytheway, and Oral History and Ageing (ed.) Joanna Bornat.

The next seminar will be held in October 2007 on the topic of visual methods in ageing research. To join the seminar mailing list please email aclark@cpa.org.uk

All the publications are available from Central Books online at www.centralbooks.com or via links at the CPA website www.cpa.org.uk/publications through the online publications catalogue.

National Database of Ageing Research (NDAR)

As a reminder to all researchers, the Centre for Policy on Ageing has established the National Database of Ageing Research – a freely available online resource. NDAR aims to be a fully comprehensive source of recent and ongoing research within the UK on all non-medical aspects of ageing and older age. The intention is to make current research activities easily accessible to researchers and users of research, and to develop a network of shared learning. The research details are collected by CPA information staff tracking and monitoring current research, and researchers entering and editing details of their own research projects. Researchers are invited to include their projects on the central database by going directly to www.cpa.org.uk/research or contacting CPA, email cpa@cpa.org.uk