Development of an Intergenerational and Age-Friendly Community Using the Social Capital Framework: Process Evaluation

Background and Purposes: In intergenerational programs, people from multiple generations share their talents, build healthy social relationships, and experience improved well-being by developing an enhanced social presence and identity. As a part of an age-friendly community initiative in a small city in the Northeast, an intergenerational engagement community project (Senior to Senior) involved a multi-year partnership between community agencies, including the local Office for Aging, a university, a high school, a senior center, and a church. As part of this partnership, a community dance was held in May of 2022, where local high school students and older adults participated in a variety of intergenerational activities. This study describes the development of an intergenerational and age-friendly community and how the principles of social capital are incorporated into the community development process.

Methods: Process evaluation was adopted to provide details for future replication of the work and to help in detecting and understanding issues in the community development. Using focus groups with community partners (n=6) and surveys with older adult participants (n=29), the research team sought to describe how community agencies collaborate on the development of intergenerational and age-friendly communities. The data was analyzed using a thematic analysis under the guidance of Carpiano’s framework of social capital in the following six steps: (1) reviewing of the data to become familiar with the dataset; (2) generating initial codes independently; (3) searching for themes; (4) reviewing possible themes and connecting themes to the principles of the social capital framework; (5) generating and defining themes to explain the overall story of the development of an intergenerational and age-friendly community; and, (6) producing the report.

Results: The social capital framework facilitated the development of following themes: (a) identification of existing social capital in the community; (b) development of social cohesion among multiple generations and community agencies; (c) assessment of social antecedents for the development of intergenerational and age-friendly communities and the implementation of sustainable community events; and, (d) benefits of the development of intergenerational and age-friendly communities.

Conclusions and Implications: The findings demonstrate the importance of understanding the contextual factors of each community and the agencies within, while also elucidating the necessity of stakeholder buy-in for the sustainable development of intergenerational and age-friendly communities. The development of social cohesion, which is the patterns of social interaction facilitating the shared norms and values for intergenerational engagement, is the cornerstone of the successful development of sustainable intergenerational and age-friendly communities. Lastly, the process evaluation highlights the importance of presenting concrete benefits of the interorganizational and community collaboration not only to community members (i.e., high school students and older adults), but to each participating agencies (i.e., Office for Aging, a university, a high school, a senior center, and a church). When each agency sees the concrete and tangible benefits, the stakeholders appear more likely to make a continued and sustained commitment to facilitating intergenerational and age-friendly activities in the future.