There's More than Meets the Eye: Complex Associations of Daily Pain, Physical Symptoms, and Self-Efficacy with Activity in Middle and Older Adulthood

Abstract

Background: Participation in activities is associated with a range of positive outcomes in adulthood. Research has shown that pain and physical symptoms are associated with less activity in older adults, whereas higher self-efficacy is associated with more activity. Such research tends to examine cross-sectional or long-term between-person change, limiting the opportunity to explore dynamic within-person processes that unfold over shorter time periods. Objectives: This study aimed to (1) replicate previous between-person associations of self-efficacy with engagement in activity and (2) examine whether daily variation in pain, physical symptoms, and self-efficacy corresponded with daily within-person variation in different types of activity. We predicted that participants would engage in less activity on days when they experienced more pain or physical symptoms than their average (a negative within-person association) and that participants would engage in more activity on days when self-efficacy was higher than average (a positive within-person association). Methods: This study used an online diary study to assess self- reported daily pain, physical symptoms, self-efficacy, and engagement in activity among 185 adults aged 51-84 years for up to 7 days. Multilevel modelling was used to examine whether between-person (average) and daily within-person variability in pain, physical symptoms, and self-efficacy were associated with social, physical, and mental activity. Results: In line with previous research, between-person self-efficacy was positively associated with social and physical activity. Supporting the hypotheses, within-person self-efficacy was also positively associated with social and physical activity. The results for pain and physical symptoms were less consistent. Between-person pain was positively associated with social activity. Age interactions indicated that within-person pain was negatively associated with social activity and positively associated with physical activity among older adults. Within-person physical symptoms were positively related to social and mental activity. Conclusion: Stable individual differences as well as short-term within-person variation in physical and psychological functioning are associated with day-to-day variation in activity. Between-person associations did not always reflect within-person associations (e.g., for pain). These complex associations may be influenced by a range of factors including the type of activity and how it is defined (e.g., specific activities and their difficulty), the type of physical symptoms experienced, and age.

Same old, same old? Age differences in the diversity of daily life.

“…Previous research has primarily focused on the frequency of specific situations (e.g., M. M. Baltes et al, 1990;Wrzus et al, 2016), but not on the diversity across situation types. Such a variable-centered approach, that is, examining the frequency people engage in specific activities, for example, hours or percentage working, hours or percentage religious activities (e.g., Curtis, Windsor, Mogle, & Bielak, 2017;Kahneman, Krueger, Schkade, Schwarz, & Stone, 2004), addresses a very different question compared with examining diversity across several variables, that is, the composition of activities within the day or within the week of a person. In addition, research in other areas such as affective variability or control diversity has shown that indices of diversity uniquely predict mental and physical health over and above mean levels (e.g., Benson et al, 2018;Drewelies, Koffer, Ram, Almeida, & Gerstorf, 2019;Kuppens et al, 2012).…”

Evaluating the Consistency of Subjective Activity Assessments and Their Relation to Cognition in Older Adults

“…Data from two samples, the Activity Characteristics and Cognition (ACC) study [6] and the TRAnsitions In Later Life (TRAILLs) study [25] were used to assess our research questions. Both samples were used to assess the first question investigating differences in self-reported leisure activity information based on the assessment time frame.…”

“…The activity assessment included items adapted from the National Study of Daily Experiences [22] and preliminary versions of the Activity Characteristics Questionnaire [6,25]. At baseline (weekly estimate), participants were asked to estimate the amount of time they spent in a typical week participating in 28 different activities.…”

Studying Within-Person Variation and Within-Person Couplings in Intensive Longitudinal Data: Lessons Learned and to Be Learned

“…One interesting question might be what accounts for inter-individual differences in these couplings. In developmental research, age has been one candidate that has often been linked with inter-individual differences in the within-person coupling of diverse variables, for example between daily pain and social as well as physical activities [19], or between the use of memory strategies and performance in an associative recall test [20]. For the stress-NA coupling, a potential correlate is the personality trait neuroticism.…”