Trajectory classes of social activity and their effects on longitudinal changes in cognitive function among older adults
Section snippets
1. Introduction
According to activity theory, continuous engagement in social activities in later life is a major contributory factor to improving and maintaining health (Longino Jr & Kart, 1982). Several studies have reported that the positive influence of social activity on health status is greater in old age than in other age groups (Lee et al., 2008). Social activities include getting together with friends, attending social events or functions, volunteering, and participating in occupational or social
2.1 Study design and participants
This study is a secondary data analysis using longitudinal data from six time periods (i.e., waves) derived from a national panel survey, the Korean Longitudinal Study of Ageing (KLoSA). The KLoSA participants include Koreans who are ≥45 years old and live in South Korea, except for Jeju Island. KLoSA data have been collected every two years beginning in 2006 using computer-assisted personal interviewing. The KLoSA is conducted by the Korea Employment Information, and data can be obtained from //survey.keis.or.kr
3.1 General characteristics
Approximately 70.1% of the respondents were 65–74 years old (Table 1). In addition, 58.5% were female, 65.8% were married and 72.2% had only an elementary education or less. Approximately 65.0% of the respondents had at least one chronic disease, 19.3% had IADL limitations, and 28.9% reported having depressive symptoms. The mean numbers of social activities in the first to sixth waves were 0.85, 0.85, 0.77, 0.76, 0.74, and 0.70, respectively. Moreover, the mean score of cognitive function in
4. Discussion
In this study, four heterogeneous social activity trajectory groups (i.e., high-stable, moderate-stable, high-decreasing, and low-decreasing) were identified using LCGM. The latent model indicated that approximately 39.0% of the respondents showed a low level of social activity engagement in the first wave (baseline) and a decrease in the level of engagement over 10 years. Only 7.8% of the respondents showed a high level of social activity engagement in the first wave and maintained their level
5. Conclusions
In a population-based sample, we examined the influence of social activity engagement on the change in cognitive function among older, community-dwelling older adults. Using 10-year longitudinal panel data, this study identified four classes of older adults’ social activity engagement trajectory: high-stable, moderate-stable, high-decreasing, and low-decreasing. Older adults with older age (≥75 years old), a low education level, IADL limitations, and depressive symptoms at baseline (first wave)
Funding
This work was supported by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF-2019S1A5B5A07106779).
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Da Eun Kim: Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Visualization, Writing – original draft. Ju Young Yoon: Methodology, Supervision, Validation, Writing – review & editing.
Declaration of competing Interest
The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest.
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