Giving voice to the environment as the silent partner in aging: examining the moderating roles of gender and family structure in older adult wellbeing
Name
ijerph-17-04373-v3.pdf
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1.7 MB
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Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
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Author(s)
Isaacson, Michal
Tripathi, Ashwin
Samanta, Tannistha
D’Ambrosio, Lisa
Coughlin, Joseph
D'Ambrosio, Lisa A
Date Issued
June 2020
Journal
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
Publisher
Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute
Citation
Isaacson, Michal et al. "Giving voice to the environment as the silent partner in aging: examining the moderating roles of gender and family structure in older adult wellbeing." International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 17, 12 (June 2020): 4373 ©2020 Author(s)
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Gerontological scholarship has long seen the environment to be a silent partner in aging. Environmental Gerontology, an established approach in Social Gerontology, has shown how the everyday lives of older adults are deeply entangled in socio-spatial environments. Adopting an Environmental Gerontology approach, we explore social and cultural dimensions of the association between out-of-home mobility and wellbeing among older adults in a north western city of India. This was established by combining high resolution time-space data collected using GPS receivers, questionnaire data and time diaries. Following a multi-staged analytical strategy, we first examine the correlation between out-of-home mobility and wellbeing using bivariate correlation. Second, we introduce gender and family structure into regression models as moderating variables to improve the models’ explanatory power. Finally, we use our results to reinterpret the Ecological Press Model of Aging to include familial structure as a factor that moderates environmental stress. Findings emphasize the central role that social constructs play in the long-established relationship between the environment and the wellbeing of older adults.
MIT Department
AgeLab (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
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Creative Commons Attribution
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17124373
