IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/geronb/v75y2020i2p293-302..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Population Priorities for Successful Aging: A Randomized Vignette Experiment

Author

Listed:
  • Elise Whitley
  • Michaela Benzeval
  • Frank Popham
  • Bob G Knight

Abstract

ObjectivesAging populations have led to increasing interest in “successful aging” but there is no consensus as to what this entails. We aimed to understand the relative importance to the general population of six commonly-used successful aging dimensions (disease, disability, physical functioning, cognitive functioning, interpersonal engagement, and productive engagement).MethodTwo thousand and ten British men and women were shown vignettes describing an older person with randomly determined favorable/unfavorable outcomes for each dimension and asked to score (0–10) how successfully the person was aging.ResultsVignettes with favorable successful aging dimensions were given higher mean scores than those with unfavorable dimensions. The dimensions given greatest importance were cognitive function (difference [95% confidence interval {CI}] in mean scores: 1.20 [1.11, 1.30]) and disability (1.18 [1.08, 1.27]), while disease (0.73 [0.64, 0.82]) and productive engagement (0.58 [0.49, 0.66]) were given the least importance. Older respondents gave increasingly greater relative importance to physical function, cognitive function, and productive engagement.DiscussionSuccessful aging definitions that focus on disease do not reflect the views of the population in general and older people in particular. Practitioners and policy makers should be aware of older people’s priorities for aging and understand how these differ from their own.

Suggested Citation

  • Elise Whitley & Michaela Benzeval & Frank Popham & Bob G Knight, 2020. "Population Priorities for Successful Aging: A Randomized Vignette Experiment," The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, The Gerontological Society of America, vol. 75(2), pages 293-302.
  • Handle: RePEc:oup:geronb:v:75:y:2020:i:2:p:293-302.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/geronb/gby060
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. World Health Organisation (WHO), 2015. "World Report on Ageing and Health," Working Papers id:7816, eSocialSciences.
    2. Nancy Morrow-Howell, 2010. "Volunteering in Later Life: Research Frontiers," The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, The Gerontological Society of America, vol. 65(4), pages 461-469.
    3. James W. Vaupel, 2010. "Biodemography of human ageing," Nature, Nature, vol. 464(7288), pages 536-542, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Matthias Lühr & Maria K. Pavlova & Maike Luhmann, 2022. "They are Doing Well, but is it by Doing Good? Pathways from Nonpolitical and Political Volunteering to Subjective Well-Being in Age Comparison," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 23(5), pages 1969-1989, June.
    2. D. Dragone & H. Strulik, 2017. "Human Health and Aging over an Infinite Time Horizon," Working Papers wp1104, Dipartimento Scienze Economiche, Universita' di Bologna.
    3. Nicole L. Van Der Gaag & Govert Bijwaard & Joop de Beer & Luc Bonneux, 2015. "A multistate model to project elderly disability in case of limited data," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 32(3), pages 75-106.
    4. Melinda Heinz & Nicholas Cone & Grace Da Rosa & Alex J. Bishop & Tanya Finchum, 2017. "Examining Supportive Evidence for Psychosocial Theories of Aging within the Oral History Narratives of Centenarians," Societies, MDPI, vol. 7(2), pages 1-21, April.
    5. Duncan Gillespie & Meredith Trotter & Shripad Tuljapurkar, 2014. "Divergence in Age Patterns of Mortality Change Drives International Divergence in Lifespan Inequality," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 51(3), pages 1003-1017, June.
    6. Gregorio Gimenez & Ana Isabel Gil-Lacruz & Marta Gil-Lacruz, 2021. "Is Happiness Linked to Subjective Life Expectancy? A Study of Chilean Senior Citizens," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 9(17), pages 1-12, August.
    7. Edouard Debonneuil & Anne Eyraud-Loisel & Frédéric Planchet, 2018. "Can Pension Funds Partially Manage Longevity Risk by Investing in a Longevity Megafund?," Risks, MDPI, vol. 6(3), pages 1-27, July.
    8. Liu, Yiwei & Duan, Yanan & Xu, Ling, 2020. "Volunteer service and positive attitudes toward aging among Chinese older adults: The mediating role of health," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 265(C).
    9. Felipe Vásquez & Gibran Vita & Daniel B. Müller, 2018. "Food Security for an Aging and Heavier Population," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(10), pages 1-19, October.
    10. Matthias Lühr & Maria K. Pavlova & Maike Luhmann, 2022. "Nonpolitical Versus Political Participation: Longitudinal Associations with Mental Health and Social Well-Being in Different Age Groups," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 159(3), pages 865-884, February.
    11. Duncan McKechnie & Murray J Fisher & Julie Pryor, 2016. "The characteristics of falls in an inpatient traumatic brain injury rehabilitation setting," Journal of Clinical Nursing, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 25(1-2), pages 213-222, January.
    12. Ting Li & James Anderson, 2013. "Shaping human mortality patterns through intrinsic and extrinsic vitality processes," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 28(12), pages 341-372.
    13. Confidence Alorse Atakro & Abigail Atakro & Janet Sintim Aboagye & Alice Aluwah Blay & Stella Boatemaa Addo & Dorcas Frempomaa Agyare & Peter Adatara & Kwaku Gyimah Amoa-Gyarteng & Awube Menlah & Isab, 2021. "Older people’s challenges and expectations of healthcare in Ghana: A qualitative study," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 16(1), pages 1-15, January.
    14. Vladimir Canudas-Romo & Tianyu Shen & Collin Payne, 2021. "The role of reductions in old-age mortality in old-age population growth," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 44(44), pages 1073-1084.
    15. Morris A. Okun & Holly P. O’Rourke & Brian Keller & Kathryn A. Johnson & Craig Enders, 2015. "Value-Expressive Volunteer Motivation and Volunteering by Older Adults: Relationships With Religiosity and Spirituality," The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, The Gerontological Society of America, vol. 70(6), pages 860-870.
    16. Shulgin, Sergey & Scherbov, Sergey & Zinkina, Yulia & Novikov, Kirill, 2017. "Medical-Demographic Differentiation According to Educational Level," Working Papers 041719, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration.
    17. Finkel, Elizabeth, 2014. "Is modern farm technology a saviour or a threat?," 2014: Ethics, Efficiency and Food Security: Feeding the 9 Billion, Well, 26-28 August 2014 225570, Crawford Fund.
    18. Andréa Gourmelen & Bertrand Urien & Marine Le Gall-Ely, 2016. "Ultimate time pressure: Conceptualisation and measurement," Post-Print hal-01904355, HAL.
    19. Oliver Razum & Albrecht Jahn, 2016. "Molecular and genomic sciences in health: apply the established rules of evidence," International Journal of Public Health, Springer;Swiss School of Public Health (SSPH+), vol. 61(4), pages 405-407, May.
    20. Ana Debón & Steven Haberman & Francisco Montes & Edoardo Otranto, 2021. "Do Different Models Induce Changes in Mortality Indicators? That Is a Key Question for Extending the Lee-Carter Model," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(4), pages 1-16, February.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:geronb:v:75:y:2020:i:2:p:293-302.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/psychsocgerontology .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.