Research on Aging最新文献

Friendships in later life play a crucial role in providing emotional support, social interaction, and a sense of belonging, particularly for older adults who lack family support. Traditionally, friendships were maintained through face-to-face interactions, phone calls, and written letters. However, with the advent of digital technology, virtual networks have emerged as vital tools in sustaining these connections, particularly for older adults with limited mobility or geographical separation. This study examined the advantages, challenges, and emotional impact of virtual friendships in later life through qualitative interviews with eight older women aged 75 to 100 from two cultural groups: Korean American and White American. It emphasized how digital connectivity shapes social relationships and offered strategies to blend virtual and in-person interactions to enhance the social well-being of aging populations.

The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly impacted older adult volunteering. It is important to understand if prior relationships between volunteering and health remain consistent in a post-pandemic context. We surveyed Oasis tutors aged 51 and older before and after two years of volunteering and matched them with a comparison group of non-volunteers in the 2016 and 2018 waves of the Health and Retirement Study. G-computation was then used on the merged sample (N = 518) to estimate the effect of volunteering on depression, functional limitations, and self-rated health. With all three matching algorithms, Oasis tutors experienced lower levels of depression and fewer functional limitations, compared to the HRS group of non-volunteers. When using nearest-neighbor matching, Oasis tutors had better self-rated health than the HRS comparison group. The Oasis Intergenerational Tutoring Program is positively associated with older adults' health, supporting the social model of health promotion.

Despite growing awareness of loneliness and social isolation among older adults, efforts to address these issues among Black older adults (BOAs) in Canada remain limited. Literature subsumes their lived experiences within broader racialized populations, obscuring their unique challenges. This study explores the narratives of 13 BOAs (n = 5 male, n = 8 female, Mean Age: 68.3) on their roles as both family caregivers and care recipients, examining how these dynamics shape their experiences of loneliness. Using a collectivist theoretical lens and a narrative inquiry approach, the analysis identified three key themes: (1) care and support from adult children, (2) family devotion, and (3) the tension between gendered façades and nurturing dynamics. While cultural expectations of family devotion and caregiving reinforced a strong sense of duty, they often masked deeper emotional gaps. These findings signal the need for culturally tailored interventions that address the emotional landscapes of BOAs, moving beyond generalized assumptions.

Engagement in the arts has shown promise as a nonpharmacological approach for mitigating age-related cognitive decline. In this study, we report on feasibility and acceptability of a remote and self-administered observational drawing intervention that deliberately engages cognition, including spatial reasoning, hand-eye coordination, and awareness of the present moment. Thirty-four participants aged 65-87 completed our randomized controlled trial. The training consisted of 10 online lessons and daily practice in which participants acquired drawing techniques that improved their drawing skills by > 0.5 SD (d = 1.27). Over 80% who completed the course rated it positively and found the online format accessible, although we observed considerable attrition (47%). Baseline drawing skills were related to mental transformation (r = 0.47), yet transfer to cognitive stills at post-test was limited. Intervention-related improvements emerged in mindfulness (d(net) = 0.81). Our study illustrates that drawing skills can be improved in older adulthood and highlights the potential of visual arts training in promoting cognition and wellbeing.

The relationship between a parent and child is one of the most enduring relationships over the life course. Older parents may rely on their adult children for support as they age. We leverage data from the Health and Retirement Study (1998-2018) to assess the dynamics of family exchanges by examining multiple types of parent exchanges and later child behavior in parent-child dyads at the onset of a parent's health limitations. Using logistic regression models, we find overall support for reciprocity, as adult children are more likely to help parents who helped them. We find that co-residence and financial transfers, but not grandchild care and being in the will, are associated with reciprocity, but patterns vary by cohort. More recent cohorts did not apply reciprocity to co-residence or financial transfers. This study highlights the importance of tracking change across time in patterns of intergenerational exchange.

Studies on COVID-19 vaccine uptake often focus on individual characteristics; however, fewer studies have assessed how the characteristics of family members might matter for vaccine decisions. This study employs a "social foreground" perspective to ask how the resources of adult children are associated with COVID-19 vaccine uptake among older adult parents. Using data from the U.S. Health and Retirement Study (N = 8086), we find that having a most-educated child who completes college is positively associated with parents' vaccine uptake when compared to having a most-educated child who did not complete college. This association is driven by respondents who themselves have a high school education or less, supporting resource substitution theory. Findings from this study extend the social foreground perspective to offer new insight into the health behaviors of older adults during pandemics.

Ageing populations foreground understanding how retirement affects quality of life. The inconclusive findings on retirement's quality of life impacts encourage further analyses of this association's complexity. Using waves 4 (2011) and 6 (2015) of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (N = 9249) and conditional change multilevel mixed-effects linear regressions, this study investigates how changes in three measures of social network involvement (size of close social network, frequency of contact with one's close social network, and emotional closeness with one's close social network) moderate how retirement is associated with quality of life. Our findings show that increased social network involvement concurrent with entry into retirement predicts a more beneficial retirement transition. These results are interpreted through role theory. Consequently, this study encourages societal and clinical attention to retirees' social network involvement. It also recommends further study of the nuances that affect how retirement is associated with quality of life.

This study prospectively examined the extent to which intergenerational care potential translated into parent's care receipt. Data were from 510 parents (aged 70-97 years at baseline) who reported on their 1496 adult children in the Longitudinal Aging Study Amsterdam, with seven observations over ten years. Joint care potential considered the number of children and their care potential types. Children with high care potential lived nearby, had frequent contact, and had significant emotional and instrumental support exchanges with their parent. For unpartnered parents, each additional child increased the likelihood of receiving intergenerational care. Having children with high care potential further increased this likelihood. For partnered parents, receiving care was more likely if all children had medium or high care potential; an additional child only contributed under this condition. Policies and practice should not assume that older parents will receive care solely based on having multiple children or a child living nearby.

This study aimed to compare levels of happiness of older women and men living in conventional dwellings (CD) and independent living facilities (ILF), and examine happiness' associations with thriving, social participation, community integration and ageism (self-directed and discrimination). A cross-sectional survey was conducted with a random sample of 509 older adults in CD and 470 in ILF in Quebec, Canada. Participants' mean age was 82.22 ± 5.35, and two-thirds were women. Levels of happiness were similar in both sexes and settings. Greater happiness was associated with greater thriving for all (β = 0.28-1.48), social participation for women in CD (β = 0.67), community integration in CD (β = 0.42 for women and 1.18 for men), and reduced ageism, i.e., discrimination for women in CD (β = -1.02) and men in ILF (β = -0.28), and self-directed for men in CD (β = -0.21). The findings demonstrate that happiness was associated with factors related to the living environment and could be enhanced through targeted interventions.

The current study examined changes and variation in self-perceptions of aging (SPA) and how these perceptions vary according to sources of support and strain from spouses, children, family, and friends. We used random intercept cross-lagged panel models to model within-person changes in SPA and support/strain over twelve years (2008-2020) among 22,160 older adults from the Health and Retirement Study. There was a bidirectional, positive association between spousal support and SPA. More positive SPA was associated with lower spousal strain, though spousal strain did not affect SPA. Surprisingly, higher strain from other family members and friends was associated with more positive SPA; support from these sources did not affect SPA. Lastly, child support and strain were unrelated to SPA. These findings highlight the complex interactions between social relationships and aging perceptions. Future studies should explore cognitive, psychological, or physiological mechanisms and outcomes underlying each relational contributor of SPA.