Centre for Policy on Ageing



Demographic, health cognitive and sensory variables as predictors of mortality in very old adults
Author(s)	Kaarin J Anstey, Mary A Luszcz, Lynne C Giles
Journal title	Psychology and Aging, vol 16, no 1, March 2001
Pages	pp 3-11
Keywords	Health [elderly] ; Mental health [elderly] ; Evaluation ; Death rate [statistics] ; Longitudinal surveys ; Australia.
Annotation	Cognitive and sensorimotor predictors of mortality were examined in the Australian Longitudinal Study of Ageing, controlling for demographic and health variables. A stratified random sample of 1,947 males and females aged 70+ were interviewed, and 1,500 assessed on measures of health, memory, verbal ability, processing speed, vision, hearing and grip strength in 1992 and 1994. Analyses of incident rate ratios for mortality over 4- and 6-year periods were conducted using Cox hierarchical regression analyses. Poor performance on nearly all cognitive variables was associated with mortality, but many of these effects were explained by measures of self-rated health and disease. Significant decline in hearing and cognitive performance also predicted mortality, as did incomplete data at Wave 1. Results suggest that poor cognitive performance and cognitive decline in very old people reflect both biological ageing and disease processes. (RH).
Accession Number	CPA-020111201 A
Classmark	CC: D: 4C: S5: 3J: 7YA
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing

...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing.