With the Thuringian Seniors’ Participation Act, a legal basis was created in 2012 to establish a nationwide infrastructure that can represent the interests of seniors. nexus is conducting a scientific evaluation of the law to examine its implementation and effectiveness. The study aims to clarify to what extent and also where senior citizens’ advisory boards have been newly formed and senior citizens’ representatives have been appointed, and what support they receive from the districts, cities and municipalities. In order to adequately address the questions of the evaluation, a mix of quantitative and qualitative methods will be used. Particularly in the qualitative surveys, a participatory basic understanding of evaluation should be emphasised, according to which the various groups of actors can influence the design and further development with their views and assessments (participatory impact).

Through this mix of methods and the comparison with other senior citizens’ participation laws, the optimisation potential of the Thuringian Senior Citizens’ Participation Act is to be identified and recommendations for the amendment of the law derived from this. In addition, the allocation of the office of the State Seniors’ Council is to be reviewed. The focus of the work is on qualitative interviews with representatives of various groups of actors. They will be conducted as guided expert interviews. For this purpose, the guidelines will be adapted to the specific contributions that the interview partners can make to the understanding and classification of the Thuringian Seniors’ Participation Act. The interviews are recorded and then transcribed in a detailed protocol and made available for computer-assisted qualitative data analysis. The evaluation is carried out as a qualitative content analysis according to Mayring.

Duration: 03/2017 – 07/2017
Client: Thüringer Ministerium für Arbeit, Soziales, Gesundheit, Frauen und Familie
Team: Dr. Christine von Blanckenburg