Productive activity clusters among middle-aged and older adults: Intersecting forms and time commitments
Productive activity clusters among middle-aged and older adults: Intersecting forms and time commitments
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DOI：
10.1093/geronb/62.4.s267
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发表时间：
2007-07-01
影响因子：
6.2
通讯作者：
Caro, Francis G.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Burr, Jeffrey A.;Mutchler, Jan E.;Caro, Francis G.
目标。本研究探讨了中老年人生产活动的潜在结构。虽然大多数研究人员都将生产性活动的形式视为离散的行为，但我们的方法抓住了一个现实，即许多人从事不止一项活动，并在这些活动中投入不同程度的时间。我们的研究数据来自美国人改变生活调查。调查的活动包括正式的志愿工作、非正式的帮助他人、无报酬的家务劳动、照料和有偿工作。我们使用潜在类聚类分析来描述活动的复杂聚类和对这些活动的时间承诺。结果表明，四聚类模型可以很好地拟合数据。具体来说，调查结果显示，中老年人群分为四类：帮助者、家庭维护者、工人/志愿者和超级帮助者。我们还展示了个人特征（例如，年龄、性别、种族）是如何与属于这四种群体之一的可能性相关联的。这一测量策略为未来的研究提供了基础，即专家如何利用生产性活动集群来了解整个生命过程中更好的幸福感。这很重要，因为我们的研究结果表明，许多活动不是独立发生的，而是以模式的方式联系在一起的。
Objectives. This study investigated the latent structure of productive activity among middle-aged and older adults. Whereas most researchers have examined forms of productive activity as discrete behaviors, our approach captured the reality that many persons engage in more than one activity and commit varying degrees of time to these activities.Methods. We took the data for this study from the Americans' Changing Lives survey. The activities examined include formal volunteer work, informal help to others, unpaid domestic work, caregiving, and paid work. We describe the complex clusters of activities and time commitment to those activities using latent class cluster analysis.Results. Our results demonstrated that a four-cluster model fit the data well. Specifically, the findings showed that middle-aged and older adults fell into four clusters: helpers, home maintainers, worker/volunteers, and super helpers. We also show how individual characteristics (e.g., age, gender, race) are associated with the likelihood of being in one of these four groups.Discussion. This measurement strategy provides a foundation for future research into how experts can employ productive activity clusters to understand better well-being across the life course. This is important because our results show that many activities do not occur independently but rather are linked in patterned ways.