Studying successful ageing: A showcase of the Singapore Life Panel

• Main Authors: YEW, Jee Yuen, GWEE, Jia Wei, SRIVATHSAN, Anirudh
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2021
• Subjects: COVID-19; youth; well-being; on-the-job training; elderly; Singapore; pandemic; Asian Studies; Behavioral Economics; Emergency and Disaster Management; Gerontology; Work, Economy and Organizations
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/rosa_reports/3; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1002&context=rosa_reports
• Institution: Singapore Management University

In this special issue of the ROSA Research Brief Series, we showcase two aspects of the work being done at the Centre for Research on Successful Ageing (ROSA). Firstly, we showcase the capabilities of the Singapore Life Panel (SLP) and the data that the SLP is able to obtain and measure on a monthly basis. Secondly, we showcase the amazing work of the SGUnited Traineeship Programme’s Research Assistants at ROSA who have proven themselves to be incredible assets in helping further ROSA’s aims of enabling successful ageing in Singapore. ROSA aims to measure well-being among older adults holistically in order to provide accurate recommendations to policy makers that would enable successful ageing. Developing and adopting the valid measures of well-being, as well as its determinants, is an important first step that ROSA has taken to do so. The first two articles in this issue showcase our efforts in this area by discussing the theoretical framework and measurements of well-being that ROSA has adopted and plans to include, as well as how the socio-economic status of our respondents, a crucial determinant of well-being, is measured in the Singapore Life Panel. While the focus of ROSA’s work is on older adults, the centre has also been cognizant of the issues faced by younger generations especially during the COVID-19 pandemic and has strived to make efforts to support younger Singaporeans during this time. Thus, when the SGUnited Traineeship initiative was launched to support fresh graduates in finding employment amidst the economic uncertainty of the pandemic, ROSA hired a total of 12 trainees as research assistants and made a commitment to develop their skills and prepare them to find employment once the pandemic was over. While they were all fresh graduates, our trainees have not failed to impress, and we are grateful for the opportunity to showcase their hard work in this special issue – all the articles in this issue are written by our trainees, and the 3rd and 4th articles showcase some of the analysis our trainees have conducted using the SLP data.