Experienced-based and Subjective Well-being Survey Toolkits for Older Adults

描述（由研究者提供）：本申请解决了广泛的挑战领域（04）临床研究和NIA特定挑战主题04-AG-105：开发基于经验的健康测量。有一个跨学科的兴趣复苏的相关因素和后果的主观和客观的福祉在老年。在某种程度上，这种兴趣是由关于身心相互作用的新证据推动的，包括情感幸福感，免疫功能，心血管疾病和长寿之间的关联。很少有对老年人口的纵向国家研究在其协议中包括福祉措施。这反映了学科内部和学科之间关于主观与客观量表的有效性和可比性以及缺乏标准调查措施的长期辩论。因此，目前的挑战是开发一种有效和可靠的工具来评估老年人的幸福感。理想的情况是，这一工具可以被纳入一个主观和客观衡量标准的调查工具包，以便来自不同学科的未来研究人员可以开始解决有关福祉和健康的知识差距。我们应对这一挑战的方法涉及几个创新步骤。我们尤其：1）为老年人建立一个新的基于经验的幸福调查措施，以解决现有措施的局限性，并将新措施与健康相关活动联系起来; 2）对HRS关于认知和情感主观幸福感的现有数据进行广泛的心理测量分析，以提供评估新措施附加值的基准，并得出优化的主观量表，以添加到全面的调查工具包中; 3）在两项针对老年人的研究中收集关于我们客观和主观幸福感的新措施的数据（电话和亲自：N = 960）; 4）使用两项研究中获得的数据评估新工具的可靠性和有效性，并确定其区分具有不同健康水平的亚组的独特潜力;以及5）就观察到的（行为）福祉的创新调查措施开展试点工作。这些新的研究和分析将为以下问题提供答案：我们对体验幸福感的创新调查措施是否提供了可靠和有效的信息？有没有可能在不影响可靠性和有效性的情况下优化目前HRS对认知和情感主观幸福感的测量？幸福感的客观和主观组成部分是否对社会人口因素和健康差距敏感？老年人幸福感的客观和主观成分之间有什么联系？拟议项目的成果将是一个创新的、有充分记录的和经过验证的工具包，用于在大型老年人调查中评估客观和主观福祉。这一工具包的应用，特别是在多学科的纵向调查，将增加我们的理解的相对重要性的经验为基础的，认知和情感的健康组成部分，在老年人，并提供宝贵的证据，有效地塑造公共政策和干预战略。使用健康和退休研究的数据，这是一项对50岁以上人群的全国代表性纵向研究，该项目将确定与健康结果相关的主观，经验和观察到的幸福感的标志。体验幸福的不同方面（例如，生活满意度、积极影响、投入愉快活动的时间）与免疫功能、心血管疾病、大脑功能和寿命有关。我们将开发和测试适合大型多学科调查的经验幸福的简约措施，以便研究幸福和风险亚组的人口趋势。

DESCRIPTION (provided by investigator): This application addresses the broad Challenge Area (04) Clinical Research and the NIA specific Challenge Topic 04-AG-105: Development of experience-based measures of well-being. There is an interdisciplinary resurgence of interest in the correlates and consequences of subjective and objective well- being in old age. In part, this interest is fueled by new evidence about mind-body interactions, including associations between affective well-being, immune functioning, cardiovascular illness, and longevity. Few longitudinal national studies of the older population include well-being measures in their protocols. This reflects a longstanding debate within and between disciplines about the validity and comparability of subjective versus objective scales and the lack of standard survey measures. Thus, the current challenge is to develop a valid and reliable instrument to assess experienced well-being in older adults. Ideally this instrument could be included in a survey toolkit of subjective and objective measures so that future researchers from different disciplines can begin to address knowledge gaps about well-being and health. Our approach to this challenge involves several innovative steps. In particular, we: 1) create a new survey measure of experience-based well-being for older adults to address the limitations of existing measures and link the new measure to health-related activities; 2) undertake extensive psychometric analyses of existing HRS data on cognitive and affective subjective well-being to provide a benchmark to assess the added-value of the new measure and to derive optimized subjective scales to add to a comprehensive survey toolkit; 3) collect data on our new measures of objective and subjective well-being in two studies with older adults (telephone and in-person: N = 960); 4) evaluate the reliability and validity of the new instruments using data obtained in the two studies and determine their unique potential to differentiate subgroups with different levels of health; and 5) conduct pilot work on an innovative survey measure of observed (behavioral) well-being. Together these new studies and analyses will provide answers to the following questions: Does our innovative survey measure of experienced well-being provide reliable and valid information? Is it possible to optimize the current HRS measures of cognitive and affective subjective well-being without compromising reliability and validity? Are objective and subjective components of well-being sensitive to socio-demographic factors and health disparities? What are the associations among objective and subjective components of well-being in old age? The outcome of the proposed project will be an innovative, well-documented, and validated toolkit for the assessment of objective and subjective well-being in large surveys of older adults. The application of this toolkit, especially in multidisciplinary longitudinal surveys, will increase our understanding of the relative importance of the experience-based, cognitive, and affective components of well-being for health in old age and contribute valuable evidence to effectively shape public policy and intervention strategies. Using data from the Health and Retirement Study, a nationally representative longitudinal study of the population over 50, this project will identify markers of subjective, experience-based, and observed well-being associated with health outcomes. Different aspects of experienced well-being (e.g., life satisfaction, positive affect, time invested in pleasurable activities) have been linked to immune functioning, cardiovascular illness, brain functioning, and longevity. We will develop and test parsimonious measures of experienced well-being suitable for large multidisciplinary surveys so that population trends in well-being and subgroups at risk can be studied.