RELIGION, AGING, AND HEALTH

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The purpose of this competing continuation application is to seek additional funds to continue work on the National Institute on Aging (NIA)-supported project: "Religion, Aging, and Health" (RO 1 AG14749). The first four years of this study were spent developing a comprehensive set of survey items to measure religion in late life. This research culminated in a nationwide survey of older whites and older African Americans (Wave 1) that was completed in 2001. A total of 1,500 older adults were interviewed successfully for the nationwide survey. Analysis of the nationwide data suggests that the newly devised religion items have sound psychometric properties, and that these measures are related to health and psychological well being in theoretically meaningful ways. Funds are requested to conduct three more waves of interviews (Waves 2 - 4) with all subjects who participated in the baseline survey (Wave 1). These additional waves of data will be used to address the following specific aims: 1.) To explore the relationships among gender, religion, and health; 2.) To examine the interface between stressful life events, religion, and health; and 3.) To continue research on race differences in religion and health among older whites and older blacks. A wide range of state-of-the-art data analytic procedures will be used to empirically evaluate these issues. Included among these procedures are individual growth curve models and latent variable structural equation models.