Autonomy, health and ageing: transnational perspectives

A comparative study was undertaken in Italy and the UK to explore elderly people's perceptions of old age and ageing, and to establish a ranking of factors which were seen to contribute to the maintenance or loss of autonomy. The results were collated with the expressed views of practitioners and others working with elderly people in a range of settings in eight different European Union Member States. These data informed the compilation of an educational programme, presented as a handbook for use by and with elderly people, the focus of which was life-skills development as a prerequisite for health education. Life-skills were defined in terms of the development of a positive self-image, a social 'ease' and a feeling of 'belongingness' in the context of old age. Assumptions underlying the framing of the educational programme were a transnationally accepted relationship between autonomy, empowerment, self-image and health, and the centrality of life-skills development as catalytic in this process. The paper, however, flags substantial conceptual and methodological issues which arose in moving towards transnationally, shared understandings within the project team at each of the three stages of the project, and offers some evaluative observations on the strengths, concerns and achievements offered by transnational research and collaborative activity.