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Demand-driven elderly care in the Netherlands

A case of exemplarian action research

University of Utrecht, Netherlands

Ben Valkenburg

University of Utrecht, Netherlands

In this article the authors present a research project on processes of transformation in organizations for elderly care in the Netherlands. First, the article presents a general description of the project and the central issue of the project — a demand-driven approach to elderly care. They present the methods of exemplarian action research that were used. In this method, quality and validity are primarily linked to the relationship between the researcher and the researched party. A central argument is that the relationship between researchers and the researched party should be based on the principle of `reciprocal adequacy', i.e. on the fundamental equivalence of both in the process of developing social scientific knowledge. The authors elaborate on these topics on a theoretical level as well as on a more practical level. On a more practical level the questions as to who should be seen as co-researchers, what role they should play in the research project and how they can fulfil this role have to be answered time and again, with different answers in different situations.

Key Words: action research • demand-driven approach • elderly care reciprocal adequacy • social policies

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