This competitive renewal proposal seeks to examine proactive adaptations undertaken by older adults to limit the adverse impact of physical impairment on their ability to function and to maximize the quality of their lives. We request funds for continuation of our ongoing three-year longitudinal study of the Buffers of the Impairment Disability Cascade. This ongoing study seeks to test a comprehensive model of social factors that retard the development of disability in the face of physical impairments in an old-old (80+) population living in Florida retirement communities. The proposed continuation study will allow for four additional follow-up of our study cohort, thereby accumulating sufficiently large numbers of cases where major health changes will have occurred so that buffers of the disability cascade could be better understood. We will also extend our study to include a comparison group of urban elders who have participated in the Cleveland-based longitudinal study: Service Use Among Black and White Elders. We thus propose to increase the """"""""spatial"""""""" and """"""""temporal"""""""" diversity of two major ongoing studies by (a) melding into a single study the divergent groups of old- old persons participating in our current Florida retirement community- based sample and Cleveland-based urban cohort of elders. By analyzing data from two diverse communities and more data collection points, we will be able to increase the range (variation) in our Demographic, Cascade, Buffer, and Quality-of-Life variables and put our model to a more robust test. Established field work procedures of both ongoing studies will be continued. In-home interviews will be conducted and performance-based impairment measures will be administered to 450 elders in each of the two locations (Florida and Cleveland). Attrition rates of 10% per year are estimated to field a projected final sample size of 321 respondents per study site during the final fourth year follow-up. To the extent that the proposed model is supported in two very different study populations and across a much broader range of physical impairments, the proposed principles would appear to be highly generalizable, rather than restricted only to a unique and homogeneous group of elders.
