Ill, worried or worried sick? Inter-relationships among indicators of wellbeing among older people in Sweden

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis study examined the associations between a large set of health indicators and wellbeing among older people (aged 66 or more years) in Sweden. The data were drawn from the Swedish Panel Survey of Ageing and the Elderly (PSAE), with variables covering information about health, daily activities, social interaction, anxieties and worries, and economic hardship. A series of confirmative factor analyses were used to reveal if and how indicators of living conditions could be subdivided into latent factors, and several socio-economic and socio-demographic variables were used as their predictors. Differences between men and women and between a number of age groups of old people were systematically scrutinised. The preferred representation of the data was a nested model that identified one global factor, which related to all manifest indicators, and three residual factors that measured the specific experiences of physical impairment, psychosocial distress and economic difficulties. The findings improve our understanding of the relationships between indicators of health and wellbeing and the various latent dimensions that simultaneously affect response patterns. More importantly, they also facilitate our understanding of older people's wellbeing and assists the interpretation of single, commonly used indicators such as subjective health.