User:Woshixiaotianshi/sandbox

CLOC PROJECT
The CLOC project is [null the Changing Lives of Older Couples project]. It is a study for investigating the spousal bereavement for old and married men and women. It is a large multi-wave prospective study and was held between 1987 and 1993. Changing Lives of Older Couples (CLOC) study investigated 1,532 married men and women from Detroit who lost their spouse. The study was conducted by the face-to-face interview. For the data collection, the researcher conducted their first interview as their baseline, and then did interviews after six months (wave 1), 18 months (wave 2), and 48 months (wave 3). This study included the data collection for a large amount of aspects. For example, it investigated the personality, social support, life events, financial, family, DSM-Diagnosis and so on. It is a quantitatively measured study of the spousal bereavement which could be further analyzed and studied.

The time period of this research
The Changing Lives of Older Couples project was held between1987 to 1993. Between June 1987 to April 1988, the study was holding its baseline interview. The follow-up study was conducted after six months, which referred to the wave 1; 18 months, which referred to the wave 2; and 49 months, which referred to the wave 3.

Methods used for this project
The Changing Lives of Older Couples project used two hour’s face-to-face interviews and questionnaires. Each respondent will redo the interviews for the three follow-up studies. Questionnaires were conducted with global grief scales and six grief subscales. Samples were supposed to fill out the questionnaires for each interview.

Sample
The Changing Lives of Older Couples project conducted the research with 1,532 married old adults. The research required that the respondents spoke English and were members of married couples. They had to be non-institutionalized and be able to attend the interviews which lasted for two hours. For the women respondents, the age of their husbands had to be at least 65. In order to guaranteed the feasibility of the five-years’ study, the women sample was larger than the men sample. After they did the baseline interview, they were expected to do the follow-up interviews. Respondents for the three follow ups were assigned matched with the baseline sample, which required the same-age, same-sex, same-race respondents. For the 335 respondents who lost their spouse during the five-years’ research period, 316 were back to be re-interview (19 persons had died). From the 316 possible respondents, 263 of them attended the follow-up interviews at least once.

Variables
Changing Lives of Older Couples project contains several variables. The survey focused on financial, social support, life events, psychological, demographic, marriages, religion, worldviews, personality and so on. CLOC study took DSM-III-R as a references to investigate the level of depression for all respondents.

Outcomes of spousal bereavement
The loss of a loved one is the most hurt thing. After old adults lost their loved one, their lives and moods were all changed. The most significant symptoms were depression and yearning. The CLOC project used grief scales to evaluate the degree of several responses towards the death of loved one. For example, anxiety, anger, depression, and yearning.

The influence of personality
Widowed person represented with more depressive symptoms than married couples. The big five personality traits are extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness. People with high extraversion and conscientiousness represented with low effects for the loss. Extraversion and conscientiousness might could against the stressors form spousal bereavement (Pai, M., & Carr, D., 2010).

After the spousal death, the old adults’ relationship with their children was different among different personalities. Based on the data from CLOC, high agreeableness widowed person would represent with more positive interactions with their children. High openness would like to reduce the negative interactions. There was also a different among gender. Widowed women with high extraversion would like to have more positive interactions and but men tended to have less positive interactions (Pai, M., & Ha, J, 2012).

The influence of social support
Widowhood who had high social contact and high social support would have less anger and fewer negative thoughts than others (Ha, J., & Ingersoll-Dayton, B, 2011). Social support could help with depression but not yearning. Relationship quality was associated more with yearning (Stroebe, W., Abakoumkin, G., & Stroebe, M., 2010).

Life events
After old adults lost their loved one. The possible life event is a new dating. However, most of the children were resentful for their parents’ new dating. It kind of hard for widowhood to form new relationships. Based on CLOC project, men were more likely to form a new relationship if they were interested in. However, women were not like to get involved in actual dating even they showed their interests (Carr, D., & Boerner, K., 2013).