#  Lishui Survey 

 



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Background and rationale

There are three main reasons for a survey study in the Lishui district:

1\. To advance eldercare in Lishui: The Lishui government, whose leaders agreed to co-invest with JITRI in the collaborative research of the Harvard-led “social technology for eldercare program,” hopes that the program can contribute to their overall Healthy City mission. Healthy aging is part of that Healthy City aspiration, and is a key goal in the planning of the City’s development. In order to advance eldercare in Lishui from its current level of performance to a higher level of development, our best strategy will be to assemble an adequately comprehensive understanding of the existing problems, the actual settings in which the elderly live, and the service systems available to them, before providing advice on policy, programs, and social technological solutions.

2\. To develop scalable eldercare policy and program models: From the very beginning of our planning for this program, we, together with JITRI, have always aimed to seek solutions for eldercare problems that affect all of China. Hence, it is our hope that what we learn locally from our research in Jiangsu, China can benefit other provinces and cities in China as well as other societies including our own facing similar situations. Lishui, one of the major districts of Nanjing City, is also the host of the Healthy China national conference, making it well positioned to become a demonstration city for the next phase of eldercare development in China. Thus, a careful survey of this limited urban area, with a focus on eldercare service needs, options, and resources, as well as both other opportunities and limitations, will provide an appropriate evidence base for developing scalable policy and program recommendations.

3\. To build a foundation for eldercare systems research: Systematic learning through a survey study can help build a foundation for research on the eldercare system that is actually available to elderly in Lishui. In recognition of the complexity in providing sustainable eldercare for a large population, we believe the advantages of the social technology approach, which emphasizes integration of technology and social systems as well as interdisciplinary collaboration in conducting research, will be best demonstrated once a baseline of relevant findings from a survey are established. But this presumption needs to be further substantiated by in-depth understanding of different eldercare scenarios. Those scenarios will help determine where interdisciplinary collaborative research can be best applied and specific innovative solutions are more likely to be accepted and implemented by eldercare practitioners.

These reasons for carrying out a survey study with careful data collection and observation within a defined geographical area in China are not without historical precedent. In 1936, Fei Xiaotong carried out an ethnographic survey in his hometown in Jiangsu province, which he later published in a famous and influential book Peasant Life in China (1939) prefaced by his mentor Bronislaw Malinowski from the London School of Economics. The survey proved to be a landmark in the history of anthropological and sociological research in China, offering enduring insight for our understanding of Chinese social structure and the problems requiring rural reform. Another example is the Dingxian Social Situation Survey, led by Li Jing Han (who was trained at Columbia University) and carried out from 1926 to 1936 in Dingxian, a county about 200 miles south of Beijing. As the first comprehensive study of Chinese rural society, the

Dingxian survey provided profound insights that informed Chinese rural development and reform and also served as a historical baseline for later sociological and anthropological investigations of societal and cultural changes in China. In addition to these early works, both Chinese and American social scientists working over the last several decades have conducted various household surveys to examine more recent societal changes in China.

These historical and more recent cases not only tell us about the potential importance of a survey study in defining the landscape of an emerging research field such as eldercare, but they provide stories of how survey implementation also can yield crucial insights, such as (a) the value of support from local authorities for obtaining the cooperation of local people; (b) the importance of particular kinds of financial support for local survey activities; (c) the utility of higher level investigators being present at the frontline of field research to enhance conceptual understanding and research flexibility; and (d) the value of safeguarding data after it is collected, among other issues.