Traditional Demographics is a Lousy Research Tool!

Traditional market researchers, demographers, advertisers, and more like to break people down into boxes. You’ve seen these if you’ve ever completed an online survey or form where you had to “check” which age group you fall into. In short, you are being put into a “demographic profile,”  which is a way to chunk people up into groups and assign all sorts of generalizations to said group.  It makes things look nice and tidy for advertisers, marketers, etc. who want to impress their bosses, but in truth demographics is only useful as an esoteric tool at best: you’re left with a nice generalization that might fit some people, but so many people don’t fit “the box” that things become very untidy. This is why I don’t use chronological age when I conduct my ethnographic or qualitative research. Aging is developmentally a very erratic time for us humans; it’s easier to stick a “tween” in a developmental box (a child between the ages of 10 and 12) than it is a retiree.

Instead, I look at social and cultural function when I choose people to interview and observe for my research. It’s much more useful to my clients, and just makes more sense. Why? Because developmentally, how “old” someone is is a function of three basic things:

1) biological age, which measures the capacity and health of someone’s organs and vital system,

2) psychological age, which is a function of how well someone adapts to their environment and external cultural changes and social forces,

3) social age, which refers to the role a person has in their wider community–this is defined by an individual’s perception of themselves and what they do in their lives.

I look at all of these factors and have come up with three ways to “chunk out” aging and the development of retirement when I conduct research:

Pre-retirees are folks who are within five or so years of “retirement.” This is not age-dependent as some people hit this functional area at age 55 and some at age 70. But functionally they are doing the same kinds of things: working and preparing for a future when their incoming earning potential declines.

Active retirees are people who have transitioned into “retirement” in some form–this could be someone who quit the job they had while raising their family (or was, unfortunately, laid off) and sought out new training for a different part-time career in their “retirement”, someone who doesn’t work and migrates from a home in the north during the summer to a southern home in the winter, someone who doesn’t work but has taken on a demanding volunteer position, or other permutations of the New Retirement. Active retirees stay in this stage until their biological and psychological age catch up with them.

Inactive retirees have (like the active retiree) already retired from their first career, but Inactives are not in the process of reinventing their lives. They are not active with friends, hobbies, or community, and seem to have lost their zest for life. Note that most retirees experience a bout of inactivity as they move from one life stage to another–it’s a question of how long they choose to stay there!

Sedentary retirees are people who are considered to be “old” in several ways. They generally need physical assistance with walking, cleaning, or washing themselves; they might be vision impaired, or have mental declines that make assistance necessary. Sedentary retirees do not necessarily need to move into retirement facilities (in fact, studies show this is not the best option at all), but they do require assistance to lead a safe, productive life.

With these three functional definitions of retirement, I can conduct meaningful research for clients that speaks directly to their question at hand, instead of using demographics, which is barely useful when it comes to researching aging consumers. I’ve seen 85-year-olds who are still functionally active retirees, and I’ve seen 70-year-olds who are sedentary–it all depends upon function, not chronology.

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