Research with older persons suffering from physical illness presents numerous challenges to gerontologists. Issues of conceptualization pertaining to the definition of illness, its location in the research paradigm, and the context in which illness occurs must be addressed prior to dealing with methodological problems. Access to physically ill…

Reviews the state of the art in research synthesis, and presents a conventional literary review, a meta-analysis, and a replicated secondary data analysis on the health and well being relationship in four articles. The two concluding commentaries elaborate and extend these issues and discuss problems and potential involved in research synthesis.…

Discusses the "5 percent fallacy," which refers to the number of older people living in institutions at a given time, and the likelihood of an older person dying in an institution. Three articles discuss research methodology, data interpretation, and measuring techniques. (JAC)