TY - JOUR
T1 - Using and interpreting mental health measures in the national social life, health, and aging project
AU - Payne, Carolyn
AU - Hedberg, E. C.
AU - Kozloski, Michael
AU - Dale, William
AU - McClintock, Martha K.
N1 - Funding Information:
Supplementary Material Supplementary material can be found at: http://psychsocgerontology. oxfordjournals.org/ Funding NSHAP was funded by the National Institutes of Health, including the Institute on Aging (R01AG033903, R37AG030481, and R01AG021487, Linda J. Waite, principal investigator), the Office of Women’s Health Research, the Office of AIDS Research, and the Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research and by NORC, which was responsible for the data collection. M. Kozloski was also supported by the National Institute on Aging Postdoctoral Training Program (T32 AG00243) through the Center on the Demography and Economics of Aging.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2014 © The Author 2014. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Gerontological Society of America. All rights reserved.
PY - 2014/11/1
Y1 - 2014/11/1
N2 - Introduction. National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project (NSHAP) included five unique mental health measures in Waves 1 and 2 that researchers can use to measure the overall emotional health of participants: depressive symptoms, happiness-unhappiness, anxiety symptoms, perceived stress, and felt loneliness. For each, we detail the rationale for its development and explain how to score, analyze, and interpret results. Method. NSHAP developed its measures by modifying traditional short-form scales to improve response efficiency and reduce respondent burden. Scoring protocols and interpretations were developed for each measure. U.S. population estimates for older adults born between 1920 and 1947 were generated using age-eligible samples from Waves 1 and 2. Results. NSHAP's protocols yielded U.S. prevalence rates similar to other nationally representative studies of older adults and comparable between waves. Higher estimates of anxiety symptoms and perceived stress in Wave 2 compared with Wave 1 were explained by age, administration mode, and time period. Analytic strategies for longitudinal analyses are provided. In Wave 2, mental health generally was worse at older ages, with women having more symptoms at younger ages than men. Women had fewer anxiety symptoms at the oldest ages. Discussion. NSHAP's mental health measures were successfully integrated into the project's survey and showed acceptable external reliability as well as moderately stable individual characteristics across the 5 years between Waves 1 and 2. Depressive symptoms and unhappiness may form a mental health cluster in the elderly, distinct from anxiety symptoms, perceived stress, and felt loneliness. Gender differences in age-specific patterns of mental health were evident using the exact age of participants rather than the traditional decade groupings. Administration mode and time period (between 2005-2006 and 2010-2011) were determined to be potential confounds that need to be accommodated in longitudinal analyses of aging, whereas sample composition was not an issue for interpreting mental health measures.
AB - Introduction. National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project (NSHAP) included five unique mental health measures in Waves 1 and 2 that researchers can use to measure the overall emotional health of participants: depressive symptoms, happiness-unhappiness, anxiety symptoms, perceived stress, and felt loneliness. For each, we detail the rationale for its development and explain how to score, analyze, and interpret results. Method. NSHAP developed its measures by modifying traditional short-form scales to improve response efficiency and reduce respondent burden. Scoring protocols and interpretations were developed for each measure. U.S. population estimates for older adults born between 1920 and 1947 were generated using age-eligible samples from Waves 1 and 2. Results. NSHAP's protocols yielded U.S. prevalence rates similar to other nationally representative studies of older adults and comparable between waves. Higher estimates of anxiety symptoms and perceived stress in Wave 2 compared with Wave 1 were explained by age, administration mode, and time period. Analytic strategies for longitudinal analyses are provided. In Wave 2, mental health generally was worse at older ages, with women having more symptoms at younger ages than men. Women had fewer anxiety symptoms at the oldest ages. Discussion. NSHAP's mental health measures were successfully integrated into the project's survey and showed acceptable external reliability as well as moderately stable individual characteristics across the 5 years between Waves 1 and 2. Depressive symptoms and unhappiness may form a mental health cluster in the elderly, distinct from anxiety symptoms, perceived stress, and felt loneliness. Gender differences in age-specific patterns of mental health were evident using the exact age of participants rather than the traditional decade groupings. Administration mode and time period (between 2005-2006 and 2010-2011) were determined to be potential confounds that need to be accommodated in longitudinal analyses of aging, whereas sample composition was not an issue for interpreting mental health measures.
KW - Anxiety
KW - Depressive symptoms
KW - Emotion
KW - Loneliness
KW - Mental health
KW - Stress
KW - Unhappiness
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U2 - 10.1093/geronb/gbu100
DO - 10.1093/geronb/gbu100
M3 - Article
C2 - 25360028
AN - SCOPUS:84920886593
SN - 1079-5014
VL - 69
SP - S99-S116
JO - Journals of Gerontology - Series B Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences
JF - Journals of Gerontology - Series B Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences
ER -