Active life in old age - Combining measures of functional ability and social participation

Objectives. 1) to describe the distribution of ALC among 75-year-old men an d women. 2) to investigate the association between ALC and life satisifacti on and 3) to describe how ALC is determined by socio-demographic, psyche-so cial, and health factors. Design. A cross-sectional population survey. Setting: Eleven municipalities in the Western part of Copenhagen County in 1989. Subjects: A random sample of 75-year-old people who were invited to partici pate in the study (participation rate: 89, n=477). Main outcome measure, ALC is a combination of two dichotomized variables: f unctional ability (dependent vs not dependent of help) and social participa tion (low vs. high). Results. For both men and women an active life (measured by ALC) was sig ni ficantly associated with life satisfaction. For men only good self-rated he alth was related to ALC in the multivariate analysis. Among women high inco me, many social contacts, good self rated health, good memory and lack of c hronic diseases were associated with GLC. Conclusions: It is an advantage to combine functional ability and social pa rticipation in the description of quality of life in old age, as 1) a high social participation may compensate for a poor functional ability, and vice versa, 2) the combined measure is meaningful for both sexes, and 3) it giv es more information than the two concepts used as separate outcome measures .