Associate Professor Heather Booth organised a symposium session at the 20th IAGG Congress of Gerontology and Geriatrics held in Seoul, Korea, from 23-27 June 2013. 

The symposium reported results of the ADSRI-based Social Networks and Ageing Project (SNAP) investigating the nature of the relationship at older ages between social support and social networks and health, retirement and wellbeing. SNAP conducts multidisciplinary research on the role of social connectivity in successful ageing. This innovative project integrates survey research with data collection from web-based social networking structures. It is beleive that this is the first and only project of its kind. The longitudinal survey collected detailed data from a national sample of 2123 older Australians, focusing on the nature of the respondents’ social networks and activities, distinguishing between family members and friends and between face-to-face and other types of communication, and measures of retirement, health and wellbeing. This rich database is used to explore underlying profile-types of social connectivity and the nature of the relationship between social support and wellbeing in terms of familial relationship, type of activity, duration and frequency of activity, intensity of relationship, etc. The data also include use of online social networking for communication, analysed in relation to demographic and socio-economic characteristics and offline social connectivity. For respondents who use Facebook, data are collected on their Facebook social network structure enabling social network analyses.

Papers presented:

The Social Networks and Ageing Project (SNAP): integrated online and offline research methods in the study of social networks in a mature-age population
Heather Booth

Profiles of social network characteristics among older Australian adults: Findings from SNAP
Tim Windsor (Flinders University)

Retirement and social connectedness: age patterns and sex differences
Pilar Rioseco

Who uses online socialnetworking? Offline social connectivity determinants of online activity
Heather Booth