Transit Crime as a Barrier to Qualitative Urban Health Research with Older Adults

This paper reports how transit crime and perception of crime have been barriers to an area-focused and person-based ethnographic urban health and wellbeing research study in St. Louis. This study has experienced two primary challenges. First, respondent concerns about crime have impeded the ability of the study to follow best practices to strengthen ethnographic and qualitative research. Second, these concerns have impeded sampling and respondent participation in a way that decreases the voice and perspectives of older adults.