Appreciative inquiry and older people - finding the literature

This paper describes the results of a literature search which sought papers specifically on appreciative inquiry (AI) and older people. The results of this search suggested that there were not many papers which met these criteria, and those that did were more often discussion papers rather than research papers. This lack of publication belies the observation that research with older people could benefit from the positive approach entailed in an AI approach. The reasons for this are discussed in the paper, but the possibility is explored that some authors may be using AI, but not classifying their studies as this. The studies that do explicitly use AI have reported that participants became productively engaged in the process, but there is little evidence that this promising start has been followed up.