ANALYSES OF HEALTH MAINTENANCE BEHAVIOR OF OLDER PEOPLE

拟议的研究项目的目的是表征当前

The purpose of the proposed research project is to characterize current levels of health maintenance activity of older persons and to attempt to identify significant sources of observed variability. The conceptual framework developed for use in this study hypothesizes that five sets of variables potentially influence levels of health maintenance activity: health beliefs and attitudes, sociodemographic factors, insurance coverage, social support and the individual's health status. Two types of health maintenance behavior are examined, use of preventive health services and personal health practices. The specific aims are to address the following issues: (1) are the indicators of health maintenance behavior of older persons unidimensional; (2) are levels of health maintenance behavior among older persons comparable to younger adult age groups; (3) is health maintenance behavior related to the health status of older persons; (4) does health maintenance activity vary by gender, age, social class and race and ethnic background; (5) how well does the proposed conceptual model account for variability in health maintenance behavior among older people; and (6) what are the implications of the study's findings for health education campaigns directed toward older persons. Three sources of data will be used in the study. One sample, the 1990 NHIS/DPHP, includes N=9464 persons aged 60 and over. The second of these samples is comprised of N=3394 adults who participated in the 1986 phase of a national study (Americans' Changing Lives). A third study sample contains N=36,409 persons who participated in the National Medical Expenditures Survey in 1987. The latter two samples resulted from complex multi-stage probability designs and they oversampled persons 60+ and minority elderly individuals. Analytic techniques will include a number of related methods including LISREL (structural equations) analyses of alternative causal models.