ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in this book. The book summarizes the impact that M. Powell Lawton's work had on their own fields of inquiry within environment-aging relations. Lawton's contributions to the most fundamental assumptions of environment-aging research guided his thinking and research. His conceptions of environmental support, security, and optimization blended so tractably to benefit vulnerable elders. The book illustrates how developments in home modification research, assessment approaches, and the service delivery system can be attributed to Lawton's influence. It examines the psychometric integrity of the measure in the context of socio-structural variables, general control beliefs, and objective and subjective housing-related variables. Lawton's work spanned all dimensions of good science from theoretical development, to taxonomic development for both behavioral and environmental domains, to methodological innovations, and finally to application for a variety of disciplines.
