Jessica A. Kelley-Moore

Proactive aging: A longitudinal study of stress, resources, agency, and well-being in late life

Objectives: Using the Proactivity Model of Successful Aging, we examined how internal and external resources contribute to the maintenance of psychological well-being and social activities among older adults who experience normative stressors of aging. Outcome variables in this study are collectively referred to as quality of life (QOL). We also examined the mediating role of proactive adaptations between internal and external resources and QOL indicators. Method: Based on five annual interviews of a sample of 1000 community-dwelling older adults in Florida (effective N = 561), we tested the lagged effects of stressors on two indicators of QOL, four years later. In the full longitudinal model, using structural equations, we estimated the direct effects of internal and external resources on QOL, along with indirect effects through proactive adaptations. Results: Stressors negatively influenced QOL four years later. Internal and external resources led to better QOL four years later, both directly and indirectly through proactive adaptations of marshaling support and planning for the future. Conclusion: These findings lend support to the Proactivity Model of Successful Aging by documenting the value of proactive adaptations (i.e., exercise, planning ahead, and marshaling support) as proximate influences on QOL outcomes (i.e., depressive symptomatology and social activities). Findings suggest that older adults can maintain successful aging even in the face of health-related and social stressors by invoking accumulated resources to deal actively with the challenges of aging.

The Social Context of Disablement among Older Adults Does Marital Quality Matter for Loneliness

Prior research has not adequately considered that disablement occurs within a web of relationships that provides socioemotional resources to and/or places demands on older adults. Drawing on the stress process and life course perspectives, we considered the social context of disablement by examining the influence of marital quality on the association between disability and loneliness among married older adults. Using data from the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project, we found (1) functional limitations were associated with higher levels of loneliness; (2) neither positive nor negative marital quality mediated this association, contrary to the stress-deterioration hypothesis; and (3) positive (but not negative) marital quality moderated this association, consistent with the stress-buffering hypothesis. These associations were similar for women and men. Our findings indicate the importance of the social context of disablement, as interpersonal resources offer protection from the deleterious socioemotional consequences of disability.

Widening the View: Capturing “Unobserved” Heterogeneity in Studies of Age and the Life Course

In the first volume of their three-volume work entitled Aging and Society (1968), Matilda White Riley and Anne Foner produced the first comprehensive inventory of empirical studies on aging. Demonstrating the growing interest in age and aging processes, the scope of this work spanned many disciplines and included a wide array of topics including adjustment to retirement (Thompson et al. 1960), response to institutional care (Beyer and Woods 1963), and age composition of the labor force (Bancroft 1958). The varied approaches to questions of the nature and process of aging had resulted in a significant body of empirical information but, to date, as Riley and Foner accounted, as yet there was “…no unified body of knowledge, no general theory of aging, that can be transmitted to students, applied in professional practice, or tested and amplified through further research” (Riley and Foner 1968:1).

RELIGIOUS SEEKING AMONG AFFILIATES AND NON-AFFILIATES: DO MENTAL AND PHYSICAL HEALTH PROBLEMS SPUR RELIGIOUS COPING?

Waves I and II, were used to examine whether physical and mental health problems precipitate religious consolation and attendance at religious services. While non-affiliates were generally less likely than affiliates to seek religious consolation, those with a stronger religious identity increased their religious seeking over time. Non-affiliates who more frequently attended religious services also increased their rate of attendance during the study. The findings provide little evidence, however, that physical or mental health factors increase religious consolation and attendance. Affiliates who had been diagnosed with cancer in the previous 12 months or had multiple chronic conditions were actually less likely to attend religious services.

Opening the Social: Sociological Imagination in Life Course Studies

The life course perspective originated with the recognition that an adequate understanding of “lives through time” requires attention to the importance of social context. Since those origins, extensive evidence of ways in which context shapes and organizes life course outcomes has been presented. Yet the problem of formulating an adequate theoretical understanding of context’s role in life course processes and outcomes persists, and remains unresolved. This paper suggests that life course scholarship, even while paying attention to context, has frequently relied on theoretical assumptions based in functionalism that restrict exploration of the full explanatory power of social forces. Contextual factors are “contained” through what we term a functional-developmental nexus. We illustrate this tension by examining three domains of life course inquiry: (1) a consideration of the place of agency in life course studies, (2) research on the early life influences on the life course and (3) the study of gene-environment interactions over the life course.

Toward advocacy in cancer care for older adults: survivors have cautious personal actions but bold advice for others.

OBJECTIVES: To examine narratives of personal coping with the cancer experience and compare them with narratives of advice offered to other cancer patients by community‐dwelling elderly cancer survivors.

The Continued Eclipse of Heterogeneity in Gerontological Research

Objectives. After a long history of neglect, diversity among older people and increasing heterogeneity with age are now familiar ideas in gerontological discourse. We take up the question of whether this increased attention is translating into the domain of empirical research. We replicate Nelson and Dannefers (1992) review of the treatment of age-based variability in gerontological research, the most recent known assessment of the issue. Method. A sample of empirical studies was drawn from six gerontological journals to determine (a) whether measures of within-age variability were reported and/or discussed and (b) if reported, the observed age-based pattern of variability in the outcome(s). Results. The majority of studies neither reported nor discussed age-based variability. Among those that did report, the great majority indicated either stability or increasing variability with age. Observed patterns varied by outcome type. Although a majority of analyses of psychological and social outcomes suggested that variability was stable across age, half of the analyses of biological/health outcomes indicated increasing variability. Overall, very few (3%) of studies suggested decreasing variability. Discussion. Consistent with earlier reports of studies, researchers continue to focus on average differences between age groups, yet key issues in social gerontology require attention to intra-age variability.

Foreign Fighters in Iraq: A Cross-National Analysis of Jihadism

Statistics on the national origin of almost one thousand killed and captured foreign fighters in Iraq reveal noticeable differences among Muslim majority countries in their jihadism rate (number of fighters/million population). These cross-national differences are used to test different theories as to the causes of Islamist extremism. The findings do not support those theories which see the cause of jihadism in the political and economic failures of Muslim societies, since the foreign fighters come from the more developed countries. The foreign fighters also come from the more religious societies, and from those societies “occupied” by U.S. or Israeli military forces.

Do Local Social Hierarchies Matter for Mental Health? A Study of Neighborhood Social Status and Depressive Symptoms in Older Adults

OBJECTIVES Despite a well-established association between relative social position and health, stratification at smaller levels of social organization has received scant attention. Neighborhood is a localized context that has increasing relevance for adults as they age, thus ones relative position within this type of mesolevel group may have an effect on mental health, independent of absolute level of social and economic resources. We examine the relationship between an older adults relative rank within their neighborhoods on two criteria and depressive symptoms. METHOD Using data from the Chicago Health and Aging Project, neighborhood relative social position was ascertained for two social domains: income and social reputation (number of neighbors one knows well enough to visit). Using multilevel models, we estimated the effect of relative position within the neighborhood on depressive symptoms, net of absolute level for each domain and average neighborhood level. RESULTS Higher neighborhood relative rankings on both income and visiting neighbors were associated with fewer depressive symptoms. Although both were modest in effect, the gradient in depressive symptoms was three times steeper for the relative rank of visiting neighbors than for income. Men had steeper gradients than women in both domains, but no race differences were observed. DISCUSSION These findings suggest that an older adults relative position in a local social hierarchy is associated with his/her mental health, net of absolute position.

The “Good Times” Cohort in Later-Life: Black–White Differences in Pathways to Functional Limitations

Race differences in midlife circumstances explain much of the disability gap in older adulthood, but questions remain about whether early life selection processes are race invariant. To address this, we (1) isolate the 1930s cohort to explore potential race-specific life courses and (2) utilize a two-stage estimation procedure to examine the role of early-to-midlife selection in shaping later-life functional limitations. Using data on Black and White adults born 1931–1941 from the Health and Retirement Study (W2–W9), we estimate trajectories of later-life functional limitations after modeling midlife income and comorbidity as a function of early life factors. Fair/poor childhood health similarly impacts midlife morbidity for both races. Childhood disadvantage (poor family, father unemployed, and no father/deceased) had an adverse effect on midlife income for White but not for Black adults. An education gradient in functional limitations exists only for White adults. We interpret these findings in the sociohistorical context of this birth cohort.