ABSTRACT
The literature concerning crime and the elderly is both extensive and varied in its interpretation of the phenomenon; however, it is also quite limited in its treatment of the non-urban elderly crime experience, viewed from a qualitative perspective. For the qualitative researcher, doing research is synonymous with multiple, simultaneous actions. Qualitative research, therefore, is naturalistic in its approach and recognizes that there may be what E. G. Guba identified as “multiple realities.” The qualitative approach was used in this study to understand the perspective of the informants, relative to crime and the elderly in a small town. Interpretations of routine activities have emphasized the activities of both offender and victim that generate the crime situation. Theories about the relationship between mass communication and individuals’ constructions of social reality require quantitative measures of media content, measures of respondents’ media use, and their perceptions about various facets of their environment, or their subjective social realities.
