Understanding ageing issues of rural people in Bangladesh: a study on Sitakunda catchment area

Introduction/Purpose: The issues of elderly predominantly focused on the urban settings in all over the world, however relatively less is known on the life of elderly in rural areas. As vast majority of elderly live in rural areas globally, research needs to be done on rural ageing to understand the dynamics of problems as a result of ageing and to provide appropriate solutions to it for sustainable development of elderly. Recently, Khan (2022) highlighted the importance of rural ageing to enhance the health and wellbeing of elderly. This research is thus attempted to identify the key issues and challenges that elderly face in a rural area of Southern Bangladesh. Method: Data will be collected from Sitakunda upa zila where YPSA has direct operations at the field level. A questionnaire is developed and piloted for a quantitative investigation. Ethical approval has been obtained from Bangladesh Medical Research Council. Data collection is currently in progress. Results: The experience of designing questionnaire and its validity check will be shared with audience in the symposium. It is expected that important findings on issues and challenges that elderly face on a daily basis in a rural setting will be identified and shared here. Conclusion: The experience of designing questionnaire and data collection will help other researchers to design their studies for a rural setting