Independent senior women who travel internationally: A collective case study.

摘要

Nine independent women over age 55 who traveled internationally were investigated through a qualitative case study. The purpose of the study was to explore the women's attitudes, actions, and motivations during and after their international travel experiences. The adult, aging, experiential, and transformational theories of researchers such as Mezirow, Kolb, and Knowles provided the framework through which the interview data was filtered. Data was obtained from two informal structured interviews, discrete field observations, and a personal reflective document created by the participant three months after the travel experience. The women's responses to their travel experience endorsed and portrayed the experiential, transformational, aging, and adult learning theories through the themes of learning, empowerment, cultural awareness, sense of community, and tourism. The most important themes generated from the data were learning, self-empowerment, cultural awareness, sense of community, and the importance of interpersonal relations with the tourism industry as a whole. The findings add to the existing theories regarding independent, senior women and suggest that women who travel internationally are more likely to be engaged with life in terms of self, community, and the world at large. The research endorses the broad idea that "knowledge is power."