Georgi Hana, Dragomirecká Eva, Tichá Zuzana, Mana Josef
Prague College of Psychosocial Studies, Prague, Czech Republic.
Department of Psychology, Faculty of Arts, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic.
Depress Anxiety. 2025 Jul 1;2025:2522358. doi: 10.1155/da/2522358. eCollection 2025.
Depression and anxiety are among the most common mental health issues of older populations, and as such they are frequently monitored covariates. The possibilities for collecting research data has grown with the recent emergence of user-friendly online survey platforms. However, to what extent the populations of older persons who participate in such research are similar to the general population remains unclear. We investigated the affective health of an open online sample of older adults (65+) in contrast to a representative randomised in-person interview sample. The surveys were conducted in 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic in the Czech Republic after the second wave of anti-COVID-19 vaccination. The online sample ( = 389) was recruited via the Internet. Participants of the in-person study ( = 633) were randomly approached according to quotas for representativeness. The administered questionnaires included a health status self-report, the Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS) and the Geriatric Anxiety Inventory - Short form (GAI-SF). Online participants reported better mental and general health; that is, they reported fewer depressive and anxiety symptoms than the randomised representative sample. In both samples, women showed higher levels of anxiety than men. Subjective general health was associated with mental health. In the randomised representative sample, in contrast to the online sample, the level of depression increased significantly with age. The open non-randomised calls for participants attracted a higher percentage of women and people with higher education than are in the general older population. Older research volunteers recruited online can be expected to be subjectively healthier and to differ largely from the general population in their sociodemographic characteristics.
抑郁症和焦虑症是老年人群中最常见的心理健康问题，因此它们经常作为被监测的协变量。随着最近用户友好型在线调查平台的出现，收集研究数据的可能性增加了。然而，参与此类研究的老年人群在多大程度上与一般人群相似仍不清楚。我们调查了一个开放的在线老年成年人样本（65岁以上）的情感健康状况，并将其与一个具有代表性的随机面对面访谈样本进行对比。这些调查于2021年在捷克共和国第二波新冠疫苗接种后的新冠疫情期间进行。在线样本（n = 389）通过互联网招募。面对面研究的参与者（n = 633）根据代表性配额被随机接触。所发放的问卷包括一份健康状况自我报告、老年抑郁量表（GDS）和老年焦虑量表简版（GAI-SF）。在线参与者报告的心理和总体健康状况更好；也就是说，他们报告的抑郁和焦虑症状比随机代表性样本更少。在两个样本中，女性的焦虑水平都高于男性。主观总体健康与心理健康相关。与在线样本相比，在随机代表性样本中，抑郁水平随年龄显著增加。公开的非随机招募参与者的方式吸引了比一般老年人群中更高比例的女性和受过高等教育的人。预计在线招募的老年研究志愿者主观上更健康，并且在社会人口统计学特征方面与一般人群有很大差异。
