Research on solitude often highlights the risks of spending time alone with a focus on negative outcomes, such as mortality and depression. When positive outcomes are associated with solitude, such as increased calmness and lower rates of depression, they are often found most strongly among midlife and older adults. Research on gerotranscendence, which focuses on a sense of psychological connectedness beyond oneself in aging, emphasizes healthy aging and positive outcomes such as enhanced psychological well-being. These areas of research have clear overlap in the context of midlife and older adulthood, but there is at present a gap between the respective literatures. This is partially because even within each field, constructs related to solitude or gerotranscendence are described ambiguously, making it challenging to discern when researchers are in fact using the same construct across studies. Additionally, explaining overlap among constructs in these literatures is non-trivial, requiring evaluation of a range of factors from personal choices to health-related factors to external circumstances. Yet by integrating these areas of study, we will deepen our understanding of the role of solitude in promoting healthy aging and inspire innovative research directions.
Our project aims to bridge the gap between these literatures and thus spur novel research into healthy aging. In pursuit of that aim, we will develop the Solitude Ontology and the Gerotranscendence Ontology, each extending from the upper-level Behavior Change Intervention Ontology. It is of course not enough to simply create ontologies representing core content in these literatures. To make this knowledge useful to stakeholders, we will create a web portal to provide automated literature recommendations and an sinterface for posing natural language questions about articles in and across these respective literatures. We intend this platform to serve as a hub for researchers, educators, and other professionals to explore and delve into these interconnected concepts, in the interest of identifying, developing, and refining interventions for promoting healthy aging. It is of course not enough to simply create ontologies and an interface to access them. We will, accordingly, pursue an extensive dissemination campaign, involving conference and workshop presentations, consensus-building exercises with other subject-matter experts, peer-reviewed publication, as well as graduate and undergraduate training in the uses of our ontologies and the portal.