Future Directions for the Demography of Aging Proceedings of a Workshop (2018) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
4 Social Well-Being and Health in the Older Population: Moving beyond Social Relationships - Linda J. Waite
4 Social Well-Being and Health in the Older Population: Moving beyond Social Relationships - Linda J. Waite
Pages 99-130
The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
Select key terms on the right to highlight them within pages of the chapter.
From page 99... ...
It suggests ways that assessments of the health of individuals, groups, or populations could be expanded to include social health, and it discusses future directions for research on the demography of social well-being at older ages. Although the WHO definition of health, promulgated over half a century ago, includes social health as equal in importance to physical and psychological health, and some researchers have incorporated the social in 1 University of Chicago and NORC.
|
From page 100... ...
Obviously, it should include adequate and well-functioning social relationships, adequate social support, little or no social strain, some social participation, social inclusion in one's society, strong and well-functioning social networks, and, perhaps, sexuality as one desires. Some definitions might include more dimensions or types of social behaviors or activities, but we can start here.
|
From page 101... ...
(2003) proposed an "interactive biopsychosocial model" in which three components, the psychocognitive, biophysical, and social health of each social partner, affect and are affected by each other within a social environment (see Figure 4-1)
|
From page 102... ...
For modern humans, stress is more often social or psychological than physical, given the nature of our lives, but social stress causes the same physiological responses, which can cause wear and tear on the body over time, leading to hypertension, cardiovascular disease, impaired immune function, and even stress-related eating and weight gain. Social relationships, if supportive, can reduce exposure to stress, mute the response to stress, and speed recovery from stress (Thoits, 2011)
|
From page 103... ...
Social isolation works to affect other domains of health through mechanisms other than stress. The socially isolated are more likely than others to live alone, to be unmarried, to have small social networks, to participate in few groups, to have few friends, and to socialize infrequently (York Cornwell and Waite, 2009a)
|
From page 104... ...
. Social capital theories all point to features of the social networks of individuals as sources of resources and by this means as indicators of social well-being.
|
From page 105... ...
There are many ways to define social networks and many ways to measure them. The National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project (NSHAP)
|
From page 106... ...
2. SOCIAL NETWORKS Network size (0–5 people)
|
From page 107... ...
3.20 (W1) Religious beliefs guided sexual behavior (1-strongly disagree → 3.00 (W1)
|
From page 108... ...
(d) Sexual Functioning & Health (0-no, 1-yes)
|
From page 109... ...
6. SOCIAL SUPPORT Opened up to family members (1=often → 3=hardly ever/never)
|
From page 110... ...
People in area can be trusted 3.70 (W2) Neighborhood social ties (0-never → 4-often)
|
From page 111... ...
This is a different type of social network than that based on discussion of important matters and does not obtain information about links between the alters. Social networks are not cast in stone; they change as the situations of the people in them change.
|
From page 112... ...
. The study of social networks is poised to benefit from recent leaps in social connectivity and the technology that supports it and from the availability of data from these platforms.
|
From page 113... ...
Social isolation has also been measured as living alone, being unmarried/unpartnered, or having infrequent contact with others, small social networks, or perceptions of low social support (Berkman et al., 2000; House et al., 1988; Ertel et al., 2008)
|
From page 114... ...
These measures include sexual desire or interest, sexual activity or behavior, sexual functioning, and sexual health (Lee et al., 2016)
|
From page 115... ...
A new set of questions asked people to evaluate the quality of their sex life and their social behavior with their partner. These include questions about how often they agree to have sex when their partner asks them; how often they have had sex in the past year, compared to how often they would have preferred to have sex; the extent to which they feel that their sex life is lacking in quality; and how physically pleasurable and, separately, how emotionally satisfying do they find their (sexual)
|
From page 116... ...
Older men who have problems with sexual functioning were more likely to have low subjective well-being, whereas for women sexual desire and the frequency of partnered sexual activities predicted positive subjective well-being. Social Support The theoretical perspectives outlined above all include mention of social support as a mechanism or pathway through which social capital, social relationships, or social isolation affect health (Berkman et al., 2000)
|
From page 117... ...
These relatively mild negatives in the marriage seem to encourage men to persist in social activities that they might give up without the wife's pushing. In a study that asks directly about difficult people in social networks, Offer and Fischer (2017)
|
From page 118... ...
For example, low-income and African American older adults live in more disordered conditions, as do those with poorer physical and mental health. Risk of living in a messy, dirty, noisy household in poor repair is lower for older adults who have a coresident partner, more nonresidential network ties, and more sources of instrumental support (York Cornwell, 2013)
|
From page 119... ...
DIFFERENTIALS IN SOCIAL WELL-BEING: GENDER, RACE, ETHNICITY, AND SOCIOECONOMIC STATUS Describing and understanding differences in various dimensions of social well-being across groups is a key future direction in the demography of aging. How do social networks differ by race and ethnicity, for example?
|
From page 120... ...
points to shockingly higher rates of death of close family members for blacks than for whites in the United States. Umberson points to the impact on social networks, social support, and successful social relationships that may follow from these losses, but little research addresses this and related issues.
|
From page 121... ...
Social networks can be measured by asking people about those to whom they are connected. But they could also be measured by counting contacts of some type -- for example, social media contacts, cell phone call records, or overlaps in activity space (Browning et al., 2017; Cagney and York Cornwell, 2017)
|
From page 122... ...
Berkman and colleagues called the next level of their model "psychosocial mechanisms at the micro level." These mechanisms include social support, social influence, social engagement, person-to-person contact, and access to resources and material goods, all of which affect health through health behaviors and through psychological and physiological pathways. To summarize this elegant model briefly, and to extend and expand it, social well-being affects and is affected by other dimensions of health through access to resources, such as time, advice, care-giving, housing, expertise, and money (York Cornwell and Waite, 2012)
|
From page 123... ...
Environments and the Social Theoretical perspectives on activity space (Browning et al., 2017) , combined with GPS and other mapping and tracking technologies, provide opportunities to understand the environments in which people spend their time and their interactions with others in the various spaces in which they conduct their lives (Cagney and York Cornwell, 2010)
|
From page 124... ...
doi: 10.1111/j.1525-1497.2004.30359.x. Cagney, K.A., and York Cornwell, E
|
From page 125... ...
. Social networks in the NSHAP Study: Rationale, measurement, and preliminary findings.
|
From page 126... ...
. Measuring functional status in the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project (NSHAP)
|
From page 127... ...
. Assessment of sleep in the National Social Life, Health and Aging Project.
|
From page 128... ...
. Social networks and health.
|
From page 129... ...
. Social support, social strain and inflam mation: Evidence from a national longitudinal study of U.S.
|
Key Terms
This material may be derived from roughly machine-read images, and so is provided only to facilitate research.
More
information on Chapter Skim is available.