Abstract
Age-related challenges and transitions can have considerable social, psychological, and physical consequences that may lead to significant changes in quality of life (QoL). As such, maintaining high levels of QoL in later life may crucially depend on the ability to demonstrate resilience (i.e., successful adaptation to late-life challenges). The current study set out to explore the interplay between several resilience factors, and how these contribute to the realization and maintenance of (different facets of) QoL. Based on the previous work, we identified behavioral coping, positive appraisal, self-management ability, and physical activity as key resilience factors. Their interplay with (various facets of) QoL, as measured with the WHOQOL-OLD, was established through network analysis. In a sample of community-dwelling older adults (55+; N=1,392), we found that QoL was most strongly (and directly) related to positive appraisal style and self-management ability. Among those, taking care of multifunctional resources (i.e., yielding various benefits at the same time) seemed to be crucial. It connected directly to “satisfaction with past, present, and future activities,” a key facet of QoL with strong interconnections to other QoL facets. Our analysis also identified resilience factor(s) with the potential to promote QoL when targeted by training, intervention, or other experimental manipulation. The appropriate set of resilience factors to manipulate may depend on the goal and/or facet of QoL that one aims to improve.
Highlights
Aging gives rise to certain challenges and transitions that are often unavoidable
We focused on a small selection of factors that appear relevant in relation to quality of life (QoL) and its facets, and hold great potential for intervention
Visual inspection revealed normal distributions for QoL, behavioral coping (BC), Positive appraisal style (PAS), and self-management ability (SMA), but a considerably skewed distribution of the physical activity (PHY) data. This variable was subjected to the robust median absolute deviation outlier detection mechanism (Leys et al, 2013), with a threshold of 2.5, leaving 1,392 participants (520 males, 871 females, one other) that were included in the analyses
Summary
Aging gives rise to certain challenges and transitions that are often unavoidable (e.g., cognitive decline, physical deterioration, or loss of spouse and friends; Janssen et al, 2002; Newman et al, 2003; Glisky, 2007; Vasconcelos et al, 2016; Wang et al, 2020). While successful aging has commonly been defined in terms of physical health and functioning, we consider it as the process of developing and maintaining the functional ability and competence that enables well-being and QoL at old age (cf World Health Organization’s definition of healthy aging; WHO, 2020a). This suggests that the key to thriving in late life may be the ability to demonstrate resilience to age-related challenges and transitions (Greve and Staudinger, 2006; Harris, 2008; Netuveli and Blane, 2008; Fry and Keyes, 2010; MacLeod et al, 2016). This approach acknowledges the complex and emergent nature of resilience (Brinkhof et al, 2021)
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