Miriam S. Moss

Objective and Subjective Uses of Time by Older People.

The time allocations of 525 older people from two independent community-resident and two types of service-agency populations were studied. The strongest determinant of time allocation, beyond basic demographic characteristics, was functional health, which was better among people spending time in most obligatory activities, both alone and outside the home. Cognitive competence was associated with media use, being alone, less rest, time with family, and time in the home. More time was spent in most-liked discretionary, but not obligatory activities. Specifically, the more time one spent interacting with friends, with household family, reading, watching television, engaging in recreation, and being in the yard, the more each of these activities was liked. While there was a strong relationship between degree of liking for most activities and personal adjustment, the actual distribution of time among the activities was quite independent of personal adjustment, with the exception of time alone, which showed a slight negative association with personal adjustment.

Valuation of Life A Concept and a Scale

Objectives: The objectivewas to derive and test the psychometric characteristics of a scale to measure Valuation of Life (VOL). Methods: Four samples were used in successive phases of exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, reliability and validity testing, and exploration of response-error effects. Estimates of Years of Desired Life were obtained under a variety of hypothetical quality-of-life (QOL)-compromising conditions of poor health. Results: Confirmed 13-item (Positive VOL) and 6-item (Negative VOL) factors were obtained. A significant relationship betweenVOLand mostYears of Desired Life estimates remained when demographic, health, quality of life, and mental health measures were controlled. Analysis of Negative VOL revealed that some respondents misunderstand the meaning of an agree response to negatively phrased items. Discussion: VOL is a cognitive-affective schema whose function as a mediator and moderator between health and end-of-life decisions deserves further research.

Marital Status, Living Arrangements, and the Well-Being of Older People:

Three large probability samples of older people are analyzed in terms of the relationships between marital status and living arrangements, on the one hand, and a variety of indicators of well-being including cognitive functioning, health, time use, family interaction, friend interaction, perceived time use, perceived quality family interaction, perceived quality friend interaction, perceived environment, and objective environmental quality. With other background factors controlled, the major effect of marital status was seen in the favorable situation of the presently married. Effects associated with living arrangements were stronger. Those living alone were healthier but notably lower in all types of subjective well-being. Living with children was associated with lower basic competence and subjective well-being, but being married had generally favorable consequences whether or not other people lived in the household.

Predictors of falls among institutionalized women with Alzheimer's disease.

Falls among elderly residents are a major concern of facilities caring for the aged. A group of institutionalized women with senile dementia of the Alzheimer type (N = 60; mean age 83) were studied longitudinally and evaluated annually on 21 variables of physical, social, emotional, self‐care, and cognitive functioning. A substudy of falls they experienced used data from two such annual evaluations. Clinical ratings by the interdisciplinary team estimated 1) the womens changes in function during the preceding year and 2) the current levels of the womens functioning. Separate regressions for each of the two years returned identical significant patterns indicating that ratings of physical vigor were significantly related to number of falls. Those women who had been among the most vigorous in the group but who had shown significant declines in the preceding year were the most vulnerable to falls; women who had been rated as the least vigorous but whose levels of vigor had been stable during the year tended to have fewer falls. Falling therefore appears to be related to the process of decline in vigor among those in the group whose levels of vigor were higher initially. There were corresponding significant declines in emotional and cognitive scales.

GRIEF ON THE WEB

Western societies increasingly have been dismantling the boundaries that separate life and death (Howarth, 2000). Studies of grief have repeatedly found that life and death are not separate, and that normal grief need not and does not terminate continuing bonds with the deceased (see Klass, Silverman, & Nickman, 1996). The end of the life of a significant other is not the end of the relationship; rather the relationship persists, not frozen in time, but evolving with modifications of biographies of self and of the deceased. These articles suggest that the bonds between the living and the dead continue into the indefinite future, and that the dead as well as the living play an active part in that bond. The four articles in this special issue focus on a new means that bereaved people have found to represent their continuing bonds with the deceased: not only by going to the physical cemetery; not only by keeping photographs and mementos at hand; not only by having continuing thoughts of and conversations with the deceased or seeking his or her guidance in life; not only by carrying out the legacy of the deceased, but by placing a memorial on a Web site on the World-Wide-Web. A central theme in these articles is the wish and reality of holding on to the deceased, as well as letting go—of maintaining the tie while accepting that the person is dead. These memorials repeatedly acknowledge the continuity of attachment over time, rather than its ending. Maintaining a tie with a deceased loved one can be self-affirming and comforting, and the maintenance of the bond can be more freeing than its denial. The status of parent, child, grandchild, spouse continues as a part of ones’ self, and to deny it may threaten the sense

The Impact of Parental Death on Middle Aged Children

There has been a paucity of literature dealing with the impact of the death of a parent upon a middle-aged child, and a number of reasons for this are explored. The quality of the bond between adult children and their parents is examined, focusing on those aspects which tend to strengthen or weaken this tie. Reaction to parental death involves the dialectic between the persistence and breaking of the bond and between the themes of finitude and personal growth. A lifelong theme of anticipatory orphanhood may help to prepare for the impact of parental death.

Impact of the Death of an Adult Child on Elderly Parents: Some Observations.

The impact of the death of an adult child on elderly parents has received little attention. Yet, findings indicate that 10 percent of all elderly parents had a child die after the parent was age sixty. Five generic themes evoked by the death of a child are explored: untimeliness, uniqueness of the parent-child bond, impact on intergenerational relations, loss of social supports, and hope for the future. Implications for research, clinical intervention, and planning are outlined.

The Role of Gender in Middle-Age Children's Responses to Parent Death

The impact of the deaths of the last surviving elderly parent of 212 middle-aged children was studied. Daughters expressed more emotional upset, somatic response, and continuing tie with the deceased parent than sons; sons reported more acceptance of the death than daughters. The childs gender was not associated with a sense of personal finitude or control of grief. When we control in regressions for characteristics of the parent, the child, and the quality of their relationship, childs gender continued to add significantly to the bereavement outcomes above.

Affective Forecasting and Advance Care Planning Anticipating Quality of Life in Future Health Statuses

That sicker people evaluate quality of life in future health status more positively, compared to healthier people, is viewed as an instance of affective forecasting error and explained by Prospect Theory, which holds that two prospects (poor health vs death) are more distinguishable when they are imminent than when distant. In a sample of 230 elderly people, we tested whether life in nine health scenarios would be more acceptable to less healthy individuals than to healthier ones. An interaction between current health status and health scenario supported the relative acceptability of poor-health prospects to sicker individuals, confirming the hypothesis.

The social context of grief among adult daughters who have lost a parent

Abstract The interface between grief, an intrapsychic and behavioral response to bereavement, and mourning, a process involving the social and cultural prescriptions for the expression of grief, has seldom been examined. Using data from a qualitative study on the effects of an elderly parent s death on adult daughters, this paper provides evidence that grief and mourning influence each other. Individual response to loss can be understood by examining interwoven intrapsychic and socially evaluative domains. Individuals struggling to incorporate these two, sometimes conflicting, dimensions may in part make choices in their own experiences of and responses to bereavement. This paper suggests that the internal debate involved in balancing personal and cultural forces not only leads to control of the expression of grief, but molds the intrapsychic experience of grief as well. For example, the need to control grief both serves to shape and contain it, and assists in maintaining an enduring tie with the deceased elderly parent.