Goals: I am a junior-level psychosocial epidemiologist of aging with experience in supportive roles on major research initiatives and in home health services. Expanded training would enable me to undertake an independent investigator role and ambitious research agenda to explain the dynamic interplay of living arrangements with health status in late life. Immediate goals include training in research methods for scale development and advanced longitudinal statistical modeling; testing a set of hypotheses in multiple data sets under various assumptions; and training in the responsible conduct of research. Long-term goals include development of a comprehensive, theory-based research agenda on living arrangements and health status and as a mentor of young investigators. Career Development Plan: Training experiences include coursework in scale construction and validation, structural equation models, and hierarchial linear models; and, in consultation with mentors, validation of new standardized methods for assessing late life attachments and behaviors related to living arrangements. Research project: Living Arrangements and Health Status in Late Life uses migration theory to guide a five-stage project to study with whom elders live, what factors determine changes in living arrangements in late life, and the health and psychosocial consequences of those changes.
The specific aims are: (1) specify dimensions of place attachment and their relationship to remote migration plans; (2) describe the longitudinal trajectories of household changes in situ and migration in late life; (3) estimate the effects of health and psychosocial predictors on household changes in situ and migration trajectories in late life; (4) identify the health and psychosocial outcomes of household changes in situ and migration trajectories in late life; (5) estimate the modifying effects of race/ethnicity, urban-rural residence, gender, and age on predictors and outcomes of living arrangements. I will examine these differences in two large population samples. In a clinical sample, I will examine attachment to place. Results: This study will develop a new theoretical model for predicting the relationship between late life living arrangements and the health-related needs of a growing elderly population, with special attention to cultural differences. The study will also develop new methods for assessing and explaining patterns of living arrangements over time. It provides a fresh approach to specifying direct and indirect predictors of changes in living arrangements and tracking the health-related outcomes of such changes among elders at risk of health problems. Armed with this information, practitioners and policy-makers will be able to assist elderly persons to achieve the greatest health-related gains at the least personal and public expense.
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