A Note From:
IOA Associate Director for Research Jennifer Craft Morgan

Eleanor Krassen Covan has been conducting life history research for several years to study the impact of personal attributes, social stratification, cohort effects, and historical period effects on life history. As Director of the Gerontology Program at UNC-Wilmington, Dr. Covan directs both the graduate and undergraduate gerontology degree programs and has expanded service learning opportunities for gerontology students. Her current research uses a life history approach to study Viet Nam combat veterans and their significant others. In particular, this study population will be used to investigate the impact of period effects (Viet Nam combat experience) on subsequent life history. For this group of veterans, experiences in combat from 1966-1971 were so profound that they have shaped all subsequent lived experience.

Her research has the potential to help present-day veterans as they come back from combat experience. Viet Nam Vet interviewees volunteered at a social gathering to have their life stories recorded in the hope of helping other combat veterans. Group members are just beginning to learn how to live with chronic post-traumatic stress disorder, having recently completed in-patient treatment for PTSD at the Hefner VA Medical Center in Salisbury, NC. Data collection and analysis are occuring simultaneously as Covan administers video-taped semi-structured life history interviews conducted in the homes of the veterans, and analyzes them employing the constant comparative method of grounded theory.

As veterans begin to tell their stories, it becomes apparent that in most instances, the horrors of war for them have not been shared previously, even among family members who are closest to them. Theoretical sampling reveals the need for follow-up interviews with family members and those in charge of treatment. Data collection will also include video-taped focus-group discussion on the impact of treatment which was delayed for 40 years, post-combat. Despite the long passage of time and suffering, this resilient group reports that now is the best part of their lives. Covan expects to produce a documentary as one means of disseminating research results.

Dr. Covan’s research is an excellent example of the relevant and important research in aging that is going on all over our state. Her research findings have the potential to influence and improve older veteran service provision across the continua of care while also contributing to the research literature on PTSD, linked lives in the context of veterans’ experiences and life history methodological approaches.

Thank you Dr. Covan for sharing your research with the Institute on Aging. Next month we will be profiling a new unit housed at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte called Aging Research Services. Stay tuned to find out more!

David Dran, Ph.D. is currently researching the changing grandparenting roles of the maturing Boomer population in the cultures of Robeson county. As early as the summer of 2008 he will begin investigating the effect of different life story media upon the perception of people with Alzheimer's disease. Steve Marson, Ph.D.'s research in progress includes Durkheim's model of suicide as applied to prevention and treatment for the elderly. Youngkyeong Sohn, Ph.D. is now investigating the assessment of needs for Korean-American middle-aged women in Fayetteville.