Record Details

A Different Shade of Gray: Midlife and Beyond in the Inner City, 1995-1996

Harvard Dataverse (Africa Rice Center, Bioversity International, CCAFS, CIAT, IFPRI, IRRI and WorldFish)

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Field Value
 
Title A Different Shade of Gray: Midlife and Beyond in the Inner City, 1995-1996
 
Identifier https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/T0KZOE
 
Creator Newman, Katherine S.
 
Publisher Harvard Dataverse
 
Description The purpose of this study was to examine the life experiences of inner-city African Americans, Puerto Ricans and Dominicans as they moved into mid-life and beyond. Participants were randomly selected from the Ethnic and Racial Minorities in Urban Areas Survey (ERMUAS) New York sample. The ERMUAS study was conducted as a companion study to the MacArthur Foundation Midus Survey on Successful Mid-Life Development to represent low income and ethnic and racial minority Americans in Chicago and New York. Participants ranged in age from twenty-five to seventy-four, the bulk between forty-one and sixty-eight years old. About two-thirds of the sample completed high school as their highest level of education and ten percent held bachelor's degrees.



The sample consisted of one-hundred participants randomly selected from the New York sample. Participants were Dominican, Puerto Rican, and African American men and women from Harlem, Brooklyn, and the Bronx, New York City. They ranged in age from twenty-five to seventy-four, the bulk being between forty-one and sixty-eight years of age. About two-thirds of the sample completed high school as their highest level of education and ten percent held bachelor's degrees.



Focused life-history interviews were administered face-to-face for a period of approximately three hours, and were tape-recorded. Topics covered included migration history; employment; education of the respondent and family members; attitudes towards welfare, opportunity and race relations; visions of middle age; and health and well-being. Participants also completed questionnaires assessing health, education, household information, neighborhood experience and services, employment history and status, network characteristics and basic demographics.



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Subject Social Sciences
mid-life
qualitative
 
Type oral history