PREDICTORS OF ONSET OF AND RECOVERY FROM MOBILITY DIFFICULTY AMONG ADULTS AGED 51-61 YEARS

Relative to information on activities of daily living, information reg arding the onset of and recovery from mobility difficulty has been lim ited. Drawing upon data gathered from 6,376 self-respondents aged 51-6 1 years at baseline (1992) who were successfully reinterviewed in 1994 as part of the Health and Retirement Survey, the authors were able to build upon and add to knowledge gained from previous studies of the o nset of and recovery from mobility difficulty. Hierarchical logistic r egression was used to separate the direct and indirect effects of pred ictors of mobility difficulty onset and recovery at 2-year follow-up, To separate direct and indirect effects, the authors categorized vario us predictors as being related to sociodemographic factors, economic f actors, health behavior, chronic disease, or physical impairment, and the categories were sequentially incorporated into a series of equatio ns. The order in which the predictors were incorporated into the equat ions followed from a theoretical model of the disability process. In t his study of mobility difficulty, the strongest direct predictors of r ecovery were having little baseline difficulty and the absence of diab etes mellitus, lung disease, and frequent pain. The strongest direct p redictors of onset were female sex, less education, low net worth, lac k of private health insurance, obesity, and frequent pain, Few indirec t predictors for either onset or recovery were identified. Predictors of recovery were few and differed from predictors of onset. Further ef forts are needed to identify modifiable predictors among females, pers ons with few economic resources, and those with frequent pain.