Abstract
BACKGROUND: Globally, various aging concepts (such as healthy aging, successful aging, and active aging) have emerged to promote the goal of "aging well" and have gained widespread attention in academia, policy, and practice to change the negative narrative on aging. However, whether and how these aging concepts have contributed to changing the negative narratives remains unclear. Moreover, they are not clearly defined nor widely agreed upon, often creating ambiguity and confusion. OBJECTIVE: This paper aims to provide a comprehensive review and comparative analysis of 16 aging concepts, with a particular focus on how their evolution in research has contributed to shifting the narrative surrounding aging. METHODS: This study used the bibliometric software VosViewer (Center for Science and Technology Studies) to visualize international collaboration among countries and cocitation networks among journals. This helped identify which countries and journals play central roles in research on aging concepts and revealed how academic contributions are distributed globally. Additionally, content analysis supported by the corpus linguistics software AntConc (Waseda University) was conducted to examine and compare the main focuses, applications, challenges, and future research directions of these concepts. RESULTS: The findings indicate that while all 16 aging concepts share the common goal of improving the quality of life for older adults, they offer different perspectives, encompassing health management, social participation, mental health, and technological innovation. Key challenges to achieving the goal of each aging concept were identified, including unequal access to health care resources, barriers to social participation, and difficulties in adopting technology. CONCLUSIONS: The overall impact of these aging concepts on reshaping negative aging narratives remains relatively limited. Future efforts should focus on advancing technology, optimizing policies, enhancing social support systems, and fostering global collaboration to provide innovative and sustainable solutions that promote the overall well-being of older adults.