Pathways to success: measuring and explaining successful aging
Date
2016
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
This dissertation examined several issues surrounding the definition, measurement and prediction of successful aging. First, it presented a novel conceptualization that defines successful aging as aging well relative to one’s peers along lines of physical health, mental functioning and outlook, and social engagement. Using the Americans’ Changing Lives dataset, I presented a methodology for operationalizing this conceptual model as a scale, as well as a validation study. Group based trajectory modeling was used to identify individuals with consistently high scores on the successful aging scale over time, allowing for a coherent estimate of the incidence of successful aging (as well as usual and sub-optimal aging) to be derived. An array of regression models were then used to predict successful aging. These regression analyses tested a model that described the direct and indirect effects of social conditions and childhood stress on aging outcomes, with special emphasis being given to how health behaviors and psychosocial factors (stress, support, mastery) mediate the effects of social and life course experiences on successful aging. The validation study was generally supportive of the successful aging scale, and it was found that most respondents clustered around one of three aging trends over time: 32.6% were aging successfully, 48.3% were usually aged, and 19.1% were sub-optimally aged. Each of these aging trajectories followed a downward trend over time, suggesting that future research should be careful to accommodate this normal downward trend. In terms of predictors, it was found that socioeconomic status, childhood stress, race, and gender were either nonsignificant or less strongly associated with successful aging than physical activity, chronic stress, and mastery. However, it was further found that activity, stress, and mastery mediated the effects of socioeconomic status, race, and (less consistently) sex, but not childhood stress. This suggests that the effects of race, class, and gender are often understated in the successful aging literature, and subsequent studies should carefully examine the direct and indirect pathways through which social conditions influence successful aging.