Intervention studies with older adults have been commonplace for at
least three decades, but there has been an explosion of intervention
research in the last decade, and its pace continues to accelerate. This
growth was in part stimulated by the vast quantities of descriptive and
observational data collected in prior decades and the desire to effectively
address the needs of elderly persons in our society. The current mantra for
gerontologists appears to be, "It is good to understand a problem, but it is
even better to show that you can do something about it."
The current volume is aimed at promoting this cause by bringing to the
forefront a diversity of cutting-edge work that falls within this tradition
and by focusing on the key scientific and pragmatic issues that intervention
researchers must address. In order to set the stage for the substantive
and methodological issues covered in subsequent chapters, we focus on
four broad themes in this chapter. First, we define intervention research
and explore the design options available for carrying out intervention
studies. Second, we identify some of the key methodological and conceptual
challenges that all intervention efforts pose.