Goal & Concept
Goal
The goal of this exercise is to explore the ways in which age, social integration, and well-being are related. Crosstabulation and comparison of means will be used.
Concept
Well-being at older ages is of major concern to social scientists, and social integration appears to play a key role in well-being.
Social integration can be generally understood as the presence of strong social ties, or roles, which connect individuals with other individuals or groups. For this exercise, social integration will be operationalized two ways: living alone or with others and community participation.
Researchers define well-being in many ways, including dimensions of physical, psychological, and social health. In the study of aging, psychological and social well-being are often measured using self-rated life satisfaction, measures of happiness, or series of questions measuring depression. This exercise will focus on a dimension of well-being related to social integration: feelings of loneliness.
Examples of possible research questions about aging, social integration, and well-being:
- Are older adults more or less likely to be socially integrated than others?
- Which age groups are most likely to live alone?
- Which age groups are most likely to volunteer or participate in community organizations?
- Do people who live alone experience loneliness more often than others?
- Do older adults who participate in the community experience less loneliness than those who do not participate?
Dataset
Data for this exercise come from the Aging, Status, and Sense of Control (ASOC) study was collected under the direction of John Mirowsky, and Catherine E. Ross. Funding for the study was provided by the National Institute on Aging. ASOC is a longitudinal study and was conducted in 1995, 1998, and 2001. The survey's focus is the relationship between age and changes in the sense of control over one's life. Respondents were asked about their physical health, medical conditions, and health behaviors. Questions regarding mental health investigated difficulties staying focused, feelings of sadness or anxiety, and enjoyment of life. Respondents' sense of control over their lives was also examined, including social support and participation and history of adversity, which covered such topics as home or apartment break-ins or assaults, major natural disasters, unemployment longer than six months, and times without enough money for clothes, food, rent, bills, or other necessities. Demographic questions included age, sex, marital status, education, work status, marital and family relations, and socioeconomic status.
The ASOC sample is designed to represent English-speaking adults in the United States, aged 18 and older in 1995. In this exercise, data from Wave III (2001) are used. Note: because these data are longitudinal, the youngest members of the sample are now age 24.
This exercise will use the following variables:
- Year of birth (YEARBORN)
- Volunteer for a church, hospital, library, scouts, or other organization (VOLUNTEE)
- Ever participate in community service, neighborhood, or political organizations (COMSERV)
- Felt lonely in past week (LONELY)
- Total Number of Adults in household (ADULTS)
- Number children under age 18 living in household (KIDS)
Application
This exercise explores the relationship between age, social involvement, and feelings of loneliness using crosstabulation and comparison of means procedures.
In this dataset, age is measured by year of birth. To create a measure more appropriate for the analyses, we subtracted year of birth from 2001 (the year the data were collected) to calculate age, then collapsed age into six categories: 24-29, 30-39, 40-49, 50-59, 60-69, and 70 and older. We called the new variable AGEGRP1.
Aging and Living Alone
Next a variable was created to measure whether or not respondents lived alone (LIVEALONE). To create this measure, we combined the responses from two variables: total number of adults in the household (ADULTS) and number of children under age 18 living in the household (KIDS). Respondents who reported only one adult and no children under age 18 living in the household were counted as living alone and coded as "1." All others were coded as "0."
To see whether age is related to living alone, look at a crosstab of AGEGRP1 and LIVEALONE. Which age groups are most likely to live alone?
Aging and Loneliness
ASOC's measure of loneliness, LONELY, asks the question, "On how many of the past seven days have you felt lonely?" Answers are coded as the number of days. To create a simpler measure of loneliness, we recoded LONELY into two categories: Zero days (0), or one or more days (1). We called the new variable FELTLONELY.
A comparison of means with FELTLONELY and AGEGRP1 shows us whether younger or older people are more likely to have felt lonely in the last seven days. Because the answers to FELTLONELY range from 0 to 1, the mean is also the percentage of respondents in each age group who felt lonely at least one day in the past week. What do you find?
Next, look at a comparison of means with FELTLONELY and LIVEALONE. What do you expect to find? Are the results as you expected?
Aging and Social Involvement
To analyze the relationship between aging, loneliness, and social involvement, we created a measure of social involvement from two variables: VOLUNTEE and COMSERV. VOLUNTEE asks the question, "Do you do volunteer work for a church, hospital, library, scouts, or other organization?" COMSERV asks, "Do you ever participate in community service, neighborhood, or political organizations?" Both are coded 1 for "yes" and 2 for "no."
To create our new measure of social involvement (PARTICIPATE), respondents were given a code of 1 if they answered "yes" to either VOLUNTEE or COMSERV, and 0 otherwise.
Are there differences in the proportion of people who participate in activities by age group? Which groups were more likely to be socially involved?
Now examine a comparison of means with FELTLONELY and PARTICIPATE among those ages 60 and over. What do you learn about the relationship between social involvement and loneliness for older adults?
Interpretation & Summary
Aging and Living Alone
Does it appear that age is related to living alone? Which age groups are most likely to live alone?
Aging and Loneliness
What did you find out about those who have felt lonely in the last week, is loneliness related to age?
What did you expect to find when you looked at loneliness and living alone? Are the results as you expected?
Aging and Social Involvement
Are there differences in the proportion of people who participate in activities by age group? Which groups were more likely to be socially involved?
What did you learn about the relationship between social involvement and loneliness for older adults?
Interpretation
Things to think about in interpreting the results:
It is important to look at the amount of missing data in each relationship and think about the ways in which that might affect the generalizability of the results - most of these analyses have very small amounts of missing data. The final table intentionally selects out individuals who are younger than 60 years old so the sample size drops by about half. In general, results from this dataset should be fairly representative of the general population because it is a national probability sample.
Reading the results: the numbers in each cell of the crosstabulation tables show the percent of the people who fall into the overlapping categories, followed by the actual number of people that represents in this sample. The coloring in the tables demonstrates how the observed numbers in each cell compares to the number expected if there was no association between the two variables. In the comparison of means tables, the numbers in the cells represent essentially the same thing - the top number is the mean of the dependent variable for each category of the independent variable. However, because the dependent variables are all coded "0" and "1" (e.g., where 0 means that the respondent doesn't do something like live alone or participate in the community and 1 means that he or she does), the mean also represents the proportion of people in that category who are coded "1" on the dependent measure. To translate that into the percent of people doing the activity of interest, simply multiply that proportion by 100.
Findings:
The use of column percentages, as shown in the crosstabulation, allows for the comparison of answers to the variable of interest across values of the grouping (independent) variable. Therefore, 93.8 percent of those who are aged 24-29 live with someone else whereas only 65.1% of those aged 70 and older do. Put another way, 34.9% of those aged 70+, 14.3% of those aged 50-59, and about 6% of those aged 24-29 live by themselves. It looks like age is related to living alone with the oldest members of the sample most likely to live alone. Remember that living with someone can mean with spouse/cohabiting partner, parents or other family members, children, or even friends.
Contrary to popular belief, more younger individuals reported feeling lonely than did older individuals. Just over a quarter (26%) of those aged 24-29 reported feeling lonely one or more days in the week before the survey but only 16% of the oldest respondents felt the same thing. The age group that was least likely to report feeling lonely was those aged 60-69. In all, percent lonely essentially declined with each successive age group.
Feelings of loneliness appear to be related to living alone - just over a quarter (27%) of those living alone reported feeling lonely in the week before the survey. In the entire sample, however, only 17% of people reported feeling so.
Patterns of participation in volunteer or community activities are not as clear. The youngest age groups, and those who are 60-69 had the smallest proportion of people who participated, while those aged 50-59 had the highest followed by those 40-49 and 70+. There is only about an 8% difference in levels of participation across the age groups though.
Looking only at those 60+ years old, we see that those who participate in community activities are less likely to report feelings of loneliness than are those who do not participate. Because the data were both collected at the same time and the participation variable looks at whether the respondent ever did any volunteer or community service and the loneliness variable captures feelings of loneliness for the week prior to the survey, we cannot assume that participation is the reason for less loneliness (e.g., it could be that people who are less prone to feeling lonely are also more likely to volunteer), but it seems plausible that that might be the case. Future work could explore the relationship further, perhaps including other measures such as social networks, time spent the previous week in volunteer activities, and the like.
Summary
The goal of this exercise was to explore the relationship between aging, social integration, and psychological well-being as measured by loneliness. We examined the ways in which age is related to the connectedness one has to family and the community. Taken together, the results show that age is not necessarily related to lower well-being as might be predicted. Additionally, while trends are present in the results, most relationships weren't perfectly linear, leaving plenty of room for you to think about variables other than those used in these analyses that might also be related to the variables of interest. The bivariate analyses show only part of the picture. The use of comparison of means also teaches one to think about the mean of a dummy (0/1 dichotomy) variable as the proportion of people who have the characteristic of interest.
Bibliography
The references presented here represent resources that might be useful to instructors and students wishing to further explore this topic. All were chosen because they relate to the topic of study, whether or not they use the specific dataset that was used in this exercise. Some relate directly to the concepts as defined by the exercise, others explore the topic more broadly either conceptually or empirically. Most can be found in the ICPSR bibliography, though some outside sources were added if they were particularly relevant.
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