Social network types and the health of older adults: Exploring reciprocal associations
Social network types and the health of older adults: Exploring reciprocal associations
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DOI：
10.1016/j.socscimed.2015.02.007
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发表时间：
2015-04-01
影响因子：
5.4
通讯作者：
Zhang, Yanlong
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Li, Ting;Zhang, Yanlong
社会网络类型已被证明对老年人的健康结果有显着的影响。然而，现有的发现仍然是不一致的，这可能在很大程度上归因于异质性的措施和方法的学者使用和单向因果关系假设在大多数研究。本研究通过使用更精确的测量来解决这些差距，以探讨网络类型是否对老年人的健康结果产生不同的影响，以及老年人的健康状况与他们采用的网络类型之间是否存在反向因果关系。使用最近三波（2005年，2008年和2012年）中国健康长寿纵向调查（n = 4190）的数据，我们使用K-means聚类方法构建了四种网络类型（即，多样的、朋友的、家庭的和受限制的），并检查了它们对各种健康外套的影响（即，身体、认知、心理和整体健康）。我们的研究结果表明，这两个因素之间有很强的相互关联。一方面，一个多样化的网络类型产生了最有益的健康结果，衡量多个健康指标，以朋友为中心的网络类型是更有益于以家庭为中心的网络类型的物理结果，但不是在心理结果。另一方面，我们发现，所有健康指标的下降导致退出更有益的网络类型，如多元化的网络类型，并转向不太有益的网络类型，如家庭为重点或限制网络。对这种互惠关系的理解可以鼓励旨在促进健康老龄化的计划专注于改善老年人的桥接社会资本，以便他们能够打破网络隔离和健康状况不佳之间的恶性循环。(C)2015爱思唯尔有限公司版权所有。
Social network types have been proved to have significant impacts on older population's health outcomes. However, the existing discoveries are still inconsistent, which may be attributed largely to the heterogeneous measures and methods scholars used and to the unidirectional causalities presumed in most research. This study addresses these gaps by using more-refined measures to explore whether the network types have differential impacts on older adults' health outcomes, and whether a reverse causal relationship exists between older adults' health conditions and the network types they adopted. Using data from three recent waves (2005, 2008, and 2012) of the Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey (n = 4190), we constructed four network types using the K-means clustering method (i.e., diverse, friend, family, and restricted), and examined their impacts on a variety of health outcothes (i.e., physical, cognitive, psychological, and overall well-being). Our results demonstrate that there are strong reciprocal associations between these two factors. On the one hand, a diverse network type yielded the most beneficial health outcomes as measured by multiple health indicators, and the friend-focused network type is more beneficial than the family-focused network type in physical outcomes but not in psychological outcomes. On the other hand, we found that a decrease in all health indicators leads to withdrawal from more-beneficial network types such as a diversified network type, and a shift to less-beneficial network types such as family-focused or restricted networks. The understanding of this reciprocal association could encourage programs designed to enhance healthy aging to focus on improving the bridging social capital of older adults so that they can break the vicious cycle between network isolation and poor health conditions. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.