Research on older people’s civic engagement has increased significantly in the last two decades, as have policy and practice initiatives aimed at promoting civic engagement among older adults. However, the growing interest of researchers and policy-makers in older people’s civic engagement has not been mirrored by a parallel effort to define what civic engagement means in later life. To contribute to ongoing debates regarding the definition of civic engagement, this paper aims to examine the extent to which the concept has been defined in the ageing literature (RQ1), the ways in which it has been defined (RQ2), and the activities that have typically been associated with the concept (RQ3). We conducted a scoping review and content analysis of gerontological definitions of the concept of civic engagement and related concepts, such as volunteering and political participation. Our study reveals the diversity of ways in which older people are engaged, with some forms of activity, such as volunteering, more commonly featuring than others, such as informally helping others. A typology of civic activities among older people arose from the analysis of definitions, which permits their hierarchical differentiation and ordering, and thus contributes to a more nuanced and complex understanding of what we mean by being civically engaged in later life.

在过去的二十年中，关于老年人的公民参与的研究以及旨在促进老年人之间的公民参与的政策和实践计划已经大大增加。但是，研究人员和政策制定者对老年人的公民参与的兴趣日增，这并没有通过平行的努力来界定公民参与在晚年生活中意味着什么。为了促进有关公民参与的定义的持续辩论，本文旨在研究老龄化文献（RQ1）中对这一概念的定义程度，其定义方式（RQ2）以及开展的活动。通常与概念（RQ3）相关联。我们对公民参与概念和相关概念的人类学定义进行了范围界定审查和内容分析，例如志愿服务和政治参与。我们的研究揭示了老年人参与某种形式的活动的方式的多样性，例如志愿服务，比其他形式的活动更具特色，例如非正式地帮助他人。对定义的分析产生了老年人中公民活动的类型学，这使他们能够进行等级区分和有序安排，从而有助于通过对以后的生活进行公民化来对我们的含义有更细致和更复杂的理解。