Aging well socially through engagement with life: adapting Rowe and Kahn's model of successful aging to Chinese cultural context.

Although aging well socially (engagement with life) is as important as aging well personally (illness avoidance and functioning) (Rowe & Kahn, 1998), it has received less research attention. A caring (CE) and a productive (PE) form of engagement were derived from an analysis of Chinese cultural meanings of engagement, and combined with illness avoidance and functioning to form a 4-factor model. Confirmatory factor analysis based on 2970 Hong Kong Chinese (40 to 74 years) showed a good model fit that was replicated a year later with 2120 of the original sample. Further analysis led to a more parsimonious model where illness avoidance and functioning converged into a single second-order factor whereas CE and PE remained as distinct first-order factors. The results supported the differentiation of Rowe and Kahn's engagement with life component into caring and productive engagements.