Steptoe, A;
Fancourt, D;
(2020)
An outcome-wide analysis of bidirectional associations between changes in meaningfulness of life and health, emotional, behavioural, and social factors.
Scientific Reports
, 10
, Article 6463. 10.1038/s41598-020-63600-9.
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Abstract
The sense that one is living a meaningful life is associated with positive health outcomes, but less is known about the role of changes in sense of meaning. This outcome-wide analysis investigated bidirectional associations between changes in ratings of doing worthwhile things in life and 32 factors in 6 domains of human function in 5,694 men and women (M = 66.65 years) from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing. Participants rated the extent they felt that the things they did in life were worthwhile in 2012 and 2014. Analyses were adjusted for age, gender, education and social class, and were weighted for non-response. We found that health (e.g. few chronic diseases, no chronic pain), emotional wellbeing (e.g. few depressive symptoms, good sleep), greater physical activity, social factors (e.g. close relationships, friends, organizational membership, volunteering, cultural engagement), and economic factors (wealth, income), at baseline were associated with 2 year increases in worthwhile ratings. Conversely, increases in worthwhile ratings over 2 years were related to more favourable health, emotional, behavioural, and social changes between 2012 and 2016 independently of baseline levels. These bidirectional relationships highlight the importance of maintaining worthwhile activities at older ages.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | An outcome-wide analysis of bidirectional associations between changes in meaningfulness of life and health, emotional, behavioural, and social factors |
| Location: | England |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1038/s41598-020-63600-9 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-63600-9 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > Institute of Epidemiology and Health UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > Institute of Epidemiology and Health > Behavioural Science and Health |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10096343 |
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