The Prediction of Subjective Wellness Among the Old-Old: Implications for the "Fourth-Age" Conception

Abstract

At old-old age, the results point to reduced predictability of subjective wellness by factual dysfunction. This finding supports the fourth-age model. Still, researchers should consider an alternative interpretation, by which increasing independence between factual and subjective indicators is protective, rather than debilitating, among old-old people.

The impact of socioeconomic conditions, social networks, and health on frail older people’s life satisfaction: a cross-sectional study

“…Our findings that independence in activities of daily living was not significantly related to frail older people’s life satisfaction were more surprising, as many prior studies have found a relationship between independence in ADL and life satisfaction (Bowling et al , 1993 ; Hillerås et al , 2001 ). Additionally, another study showed that dependence in ADL predicted subjective well-being among people at old-old age (Shmotkin, Shrira, Eyal, Blumstein & Shorek, 2014 ).…”

Do Higher Levels of Resilience Buffer the Deleterious Impact of Chronic Illness on Disability in Later Life?

“…In addition, while most of the 12 articles conceive of resilience in a similar way as laid out in the present study-as the capacity to recover from or adapt to challenging circumstances (e.g., Masten, Best, & Garmezy, 1990)-the potential value of resilience in shaping aging-related changes was not examined. Of the studies on resilience, several articles were guided by resilience as a conceptual framework (e.g., Emlet et al, 2013;Frederickson-Goldsen et al, 2013;Kotter-Gruhn & Hess, 2012;Pitzer & Fingerman, 2010) or a resilience theoretical perspective (Emlet et al, 2011), while others were concerned with resilience as a physical outcome (Resnick et al, 2011;Shmotkin et al, 2013), or were equated with subjective quality of life (Hildon et al, 2010). Only one article used a resilience scale (the Connor-Davidson resilience scale), which was included only as a control variable (Wolinsky et al, 2013).…”

Disentangling the Concept of Well-Being in Very Old Age Using Rodgers’ Evolutionary Concept Analysis

“…Very old individuals' adaptational abilities are immensely challenged by various agerelated losses and increased vulnerability (Chui et al, 2015;Haugan et al, 2013b;Ihle et al, 2017;Schilling et al, 2013;Shmotkin et al, 2013;Wettstein et al, 2015). At the same time, the need for adaptation becomes even more crucial for the same reasons (Ihle et al, 2017;Shmotkin et al, 2013). Thus, some authors raised concerns regarding whether very old age curbs this ability (Hansen & Slagsvold, 2012;Nakagawa et al, 2018;Palgi, 2013).…”

“…Other aspects of health were also seen as closely connected to well-being. For instance, psychological well-being was regarded an integrative factor of one's physical health (Zaslavsky et al, 2014), and perceived health was used as an indicator of well-being (Tomás et al, 2012;Shmotkin et al, 2013). However, others did not equate perceived health and wellbeing; they instead used perceived health as an explanatory variable for well-being (e.g., Neubauer et al, 2017;Ng et al, 2017), reflecting an inconsequence in how health-related concepts are considered and used in relation to well-being.…”