NSHAP data show predictors of depression in late life differ for men and women

According to authors Cheung and Mui, “By 2030, when all baby boomers reach 65, 20 percent of all Americans will be aged 65 and over.” The rapidly aging nature of the US population underscores the need to understand its physical and mental health trajectories. In this article, Cheung and Miu investigated depression in elderly Americans, specifically testing the role of gender in explaining the relationship between multiple levels of coping factors, stressors (with a special focus on community stressors), and depressive symptoms. They chose to conduct secondary research using an existing robust national dataset, the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project (NSHAP): Round 3 and COVID-19 Study, [United States], 2015-2016, 2020-2021 (ICPSR 36873). Begun in 2005, NSHAP is currently in its fourth round and preparing for its fifth. It collects data about the well-being of older, community-dwelling Americans. Respondents are interviewed in their homes about their physical health, illness, medication use, cognitive function, emotional health, sensory function, health behaviors, community characteristics, and social connectedness, with a focus on social and intimate relationships.

To look at factors that predict depression in older adults, Cheung and Mui used Round 3, which had 4,777 respondents aged 24 to 97. It also included a new cohort born between 1948 and 1965 together with their partners. Cheung and Mui analyzed data from a sample of 3,104 community-dwelling adults aged 60 and older. They measured depression using an 11-item CESD scale, and they grouped independent variables into sociodemographics, coping resources (social participation and social support), and stressors (health-related, social relationships, and community factors). They found high rates of clinically significant depression symptoms in both genders. But they found that older men and women had different predictors of those symptoms. Specifically, they found unique predictors for older men’s depression included less friend support, cognitive challenges, and less perceived control. Unique predictors for older women’s depression included less social participation, less spousal emotional support, more impairment of activities that enable one to live independently in a community, and family disharmony. Community factors were not significant predictors for either gender, contrary to some prior studies’ results. The authors conveyed that their findings indicate a need for gender-sensitive mental health services and programs for older adults.

Cheung and Mui accessed NSHAP via the National Archive of Computerized Data on Aging (NACDA), which currently distributes Rounds 1-3, and also maintains a Colectica portal with the NSHAP Core data, which allows users to interact with variables across those waves and create customized subsets. Also included in Round 3 was the COVID-19 sub-study, administered in the Fall of 2020, which was a brief self-report questionnaire that probed how the coronavirus pandemic changed older adults’ lives. For more findings based on NSHAP data, see the hundreds of other publications linked to NSHAP studies in the ICPSR Bibliography.