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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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The association between activity and well-being in later life
— what really matters? | | Author(s) | Howard Litwin, Sharon Shiovitz-Ezra |
| Journal title | Ageing and Society, vol 26, part 2, March 2006 |
| Pages | pp 225-242 |
| Source | http://www.journals.cambridge.org/jid_ASO |
| Keywords | Activities of older people ; Social contacts ; Participation ; Well being ; Personal relationships ; Correlation ; Israel. |
| Annotation | A study of the complex associations between older people's participation in activity and their well-being in later life used data from a national sample of 1,334 Jewish-Israeli retirees. Confirmatory factor analysis substantiated a division of the activities into solitary, formal and informal categories, as postulated by activity theory. The outcome measure, the latent construct well-being, was compiled from scores on the 12-item General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12), a global measure of life satisfaction, and a measure of satisfaction with the use of time. The analysis also examined the influence of socio-economic status, health status and the quality of inter-personal relationships. "Social relationship quality", also a latent construct, was a composite of measures of satisfaction with children, friends and neighbours and a self-rated loneliness scale. Path analysis using structural equation modelling was employed. The results showed that when the quality of social relationships was taken into account, the amount of activity had no independent effect on the respondents' well-being. Moreover, it was social relationship quality, a facet of informal activity, that has generally been neglected in activity research, that emerged as the most influential variable in the association between activity and well-being. Thus, the findings provide empirical backing for the assertion that the quality of social ties matter more than activity participation per se as predictors of a good old age. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-060314205 A |
| Classmark | G: TOA: TMB: D:F:5HH: DS: 49: 7H6 |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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