Department of Human Development and Family Studies, Pennsylvania State University, 118 Henderson Building, University Park, PA 16802, USA.
Dev Psychol. 2011 Jan;47(1):9-18. doi: 10.1037/a0021022.
Perceived control and health are often closely linked in adulthood and old age. Little is known, however, about their time-ordered interplay at various phases of adult life. By applying dynamic models to four waves of data over 15.5 years from the Americans' Changing Lives Study, we examined time-ordered relations between perceived control and health in midlife and old age. Results revealed that levels of perceived control predict subsequent changes in health over time in old age (65+ years of age; n = 1,238) but not in midlife (25-64 years of age; n = 2,364). No evidence was found for predictive effects of health for changes in perceived control in either age group. These age-differential findings were corroborated with nested-model comparisons. Predictive effects of perceived control for health were attenuated to the null in models covarying for sociodemographic and psychosocial factors (physical activity, memory, emotional support, and depressive symptoms), suggesting that these variables play an important role in control-health relations. Our discussion focuses on the importance of perceived control for healthy living in old age and the differential implications of perceived control for health in midlife and old age.
在成年期和老年期，感知控制和健康通常密切相关。然而，对于它们在成年期各个阶段的有序相互作用，我们知之甚少。通过应用动态模型，对来自美国人生活变化研究的四个跨越 15.5 年的数据进行分析，我们考察了中年和老年时期感知控制与健康之间的时间顺序关系。结果表明，感知控制水平可以预测老年时期（65 岁及以上；n=1238）的后续健康变化，但不能预测中年时期（25-64 岁；n=2364）的健康变化。在任何一个年龄组中，都没有发现健康状况对感知控制变化有预测作用的证据。这些年龄差异的发现与嵌套模型比较相吻合。在考虑了社会人口学和心理社会因素（身体活动、记忆、情感支持和抑郁症状）的模型中，感知控制对健康的预测作用减弱到零，这表明这些变量在控制-健康关系中起着重要作用。我们的讨论重点关注感知控制对老年健康生活的重要性，以及感知控制对中年和老年健康的不同影响。
