Life After 100 Years Still Golden

Snapshot from The New York Times

Advancements in healthcare are allowing people to live longer than ever, with many reaching 100 years of age or more.  Some question the quality of life at this age, but a set of interviews conducted by The New York Times shows that you can have a very meaningful and enjoyable life in old age if you take care of yourself.

The New York Times published a multimedia feature called “Secrets of the Centenarians,” produced by Karen Barrow, Jon Huang, Soo-Jeong Kang, and Andrew Kueneman.  To create this feature, they conducted qualitative field research and collected qualitative data, which, put simply, is “…observations not easily reduced to numbers” (Babbie, pg. 315).  They conducted qualitative interviews with eight people aged 99 and older.  According to Babbie, a qualitative interview is “…an interaction between an interviewer and a respondent in which the interviewer has a general plan of inquiry including the topics to be covered, but not a set of questions that must be asked with particular words and in a particular order” (pg. 340).

Babbie also adds that, “a qualitative interview is essentially a conversation in which the interviewer establishes a general direction for the conversation and pursues specific topics raised by the respondent. Ideally, the respondent does most of the talking” (pg. 340).

That is exactly what happened in the interviews with the subjects of “Secrets of the Centenarians.”  They were asked open-ended, probing questions, such as what their favorite memory is, what they do to keep busy, what their hobbies are, and what they think the secret to life is, among other things.  These questions allowed each of the subjects to tell a story and let the listeners really get to know them.  I think that a qualitative research approach to this subject is much more effective than quantitative because it allowed the interviewers to get a full and complete spectrum view of these Centenarians’ lives.  The stories and memories shared made these subjects more relatable and personified the aging process, rather than being reduced to a number that filled out a survey.

Although this qualitative research wasn’t done with scientific hypotheses and research questions in mind, it does show us that the technology not only allows us to live longer, but also allows us to have more years to enjoy the things we love.  Some of the subjects still drive, exercise, go out dancing, work and go out to dinner multiple nights a week.  I think that this information could be helpful to scientists who are studying the aging process and also to the doctors who are constantly making health discoveries to prolong and improve the quality of life.

One of the subjects, Phil Damsky, who is 100 years old, leaves us with some good advice: “I thought I was going to live forever, but there’s no such thing. But enjoy every minute that you’re living. I think that’s some good advice” (Barrow).