Elderly people in Illinois face unmet care and support needs due to challenges facing formal and informal social support systems. Some of the unique challenges of reporting for Illinois’ elderly people include poor education, mental health problems, lack of steady income, frailty, and high levels of comorbidity. Practice and the conduct of reporting for this population has been significantly improved by the introduction of methodological tools, such as consolidated standards of reporting trials (CONSORT) (Abdi, Spann & Hawley, 2019). This tool requires the reporter not to give details pertinent to the population being studied, including age, sex, income levels, and educational background information. Rather, the reporter should include a range of information that is relevant to the characterization of older people in general. Also, a report should be a formal document capturing the results of a sociological investigation and the progress of a research project. Though some elements of a report may be generic, there are themes that are specific and that make the report distinctive. The content of the report needs to be objective, meaning that it should not be influenced by personal biases or opinions of the report writer.
In the state of Illinois, elderly people are characterized by the range of physical and psychological challenges that are caused by living with chronic conditions. Because of these conditions, older people are in constant need of care and support in three life domains: psychological health, social relationships and activities, and activities related to domestic life, self-care, and morbidity. Research has demonstrated that older people need social support to cope with their health problems and maintain independence ( Provencher et al., 2016). However, there are some environmental hurdles that hinder them from achieving these goals, including lack of information about where and how to access social support services, poor coordination and communication of services in their neighborhoods, and lack of professional services on self-care strategies. Sociological reporters in Illinois should consider these personal and environmental challenges while using the relevant methods of classifying, organizing, and reporting information about the older people.
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Equally notably, reporting for the elderly people is a process that requires sociologists to consider the unique characteristics of the audience. For instance, reporting should be designed to suit the characteristics of the elderly people, including their educational levels and physical and mental capabilities. A sociological report that is developed from the perspective of the older would be use-friendly and would have significant impact on their lives. According to Miles & Stott (2017), presentation and content of a report should be structured in a manner that makes the main themes and ideas clear and that shapes future actions and lives of the audience. Also, a good sociological report for the older people should contain some increments of knowledge and provide social care and support groups with the right information that would enable them to come up with the right solutions to the challenges faced by the older population. Some of the errors that can make reporting ineffective are the use of excessive jargon, inclusion of personal biases and personal and confidential information, presence of factual inaccuracies, and absence of reasoning and reference.
Some of the limitations that hinder effective reporting for the older people include the fact most of reports supplement their survey findings with grew literature (Abdi, Spann & Hawley, 2019). The use of grew literature creates the possibility that some of the most important information in research articles may be missed in final reporting.
References
Abdi, S., Spann, J. & Hawley, M. (2019). Understanding the care and support needs of older people: a scoping review and categorisation using the WHO international classification of functioning, disability and health framework (ICF). BMC Geriatr 19, 195. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12877-019-1189-9
Miles D W. & Stott, D.J. (2017). Conducting and reporting trials for older people, Age and Ageing , Volume 46, Issue 6, November, 889–894, https://doi.org/10.1093/ageing/afx153
Provencher V, et al. (2016). Optimizing social participation in community-dwelling older adults through the use of behavioral coping strategies. Disabil Rehabil. 38(10):972–8.
