Date of Award
2024
Document Type
Dissertation
Publication Status
Version of Record
Submission Date
October 2026
Thesis/Dissertation Advisor [Chair]
Backstrom, Laura
Abstract
No group was more physically vulnerable to the COVID-19 pandemic than older adults. However, differing life histories and structural realities make for widely varying pandemic experiences. Using a life course approach, this study situates the COVID-19 pandemic and use of communication tools into context of older adults’ life experience with disasters and technology. Merging the scholarly fields of disaster sociology and aging studies, the purpose of this research is to find how life course experience and technology use impacted older adults’ perception of, and response to, COVID-19. Accordingly, I ask how does previous disaster experience and technology usage influence older adults’ coping regarding aging and crisis? Using 29 semi-structured interviews and two focus groups with older adults, I find that the political economic context in which a person experiences disaster has reverberations decades later. This can trigger a process of cumulative advantage, and that men and women have different access points to that process dependent on that context. Moreover, older adults make crisis-based decisions anchored in their current circumstances, not consciously in response to prior experience. In addition, early experience with technology, especially through work, helps to establish a solid foundation for resilience both in terms of resources and adaptation. I found the participants in this study to be remarkably resilient during the COVID-19 pandemic as a result of either earlier disaster experience, opportunities through work and relationships, and their ability to technologically adapt.
Extent
230 p.
Recommended Citation
Kessel, Jordanne, "PANDEMIC PERSPECTIVES: THE INFLUENCE OF DISASTER EXPERIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY USE OVER THE LIFE COURSE ON COVID-19 PERCEPTION AND RESPONSE AMONG OLDER ADULTS" (2024). Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2020 - Present. 1469.
https://digitalcommons.fau.edu/etd_general/1469
Identifier
FA00014465
Comments
Includes bibliography.|Dissertation (PhD)--Florida Atlantic University, 2024.|FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection|Includes bibliography.