Using Ecological Momentary Assessment to Examine the Relationship Between Productive Engagement and Health and Well-Being in Later Life

Purpose. Historically, older adults have been directed away from socially-productive roles and “pushed toward less meaningful participation or into roles for which there are no market equivalents, no compensation, little recognition, and few institutional supports” (Morrow-Howell et al, 2001, p. 4). As a result, much of the existing research on the experience of activity participation among older adults has focused on leisure and home-based activities. Today’s older adults are participating in productive activities more often than generations past and their participation is expected to increase in coming years. Yet, the subjective experience of performing significant amounts of paid work, volunteering, caregiving, or informal helping in older adulthood is not well understood. The current study aims to understand the experience of productive engagement among a sample of community-dwelling adults age 65 or older who are regularly participating in paid work, formal volunteer work, caregiving, and/or informal helping. This study employed Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA) methods, which permits the assessment of fluctuations in engagement over the course of a day or week.

Method. Data was collected from 53 community-dwelling adults aged 65 and older as part of the EngAGE Study in 2013/14. Participants were recruited through email announcements or fliers distributed by four Boston-area non-profit organizations that serve community-dwelling older adults. The 53 participants ranged from age 65 to 83 (M=70.2; SD=4.8). A mobile ecological momentary assessment application (mEMA, developed by Ilumivu.com) was used to signal respondents on an iPad mini at 5 random times during the hours of 9am-5pm and then again before bed (8pm) to complete a short survey. The final sample consisted of 53 individuals who provided 1,546 daytime responses out of 1,855 prompts, for an overall response rate of 84.7% for daytime surveys. For all momentary measures, respondents were asked to think about what they were doing at the time they received the survey prompt.

Results. The data structure of the proposed study is hierarchical, such that the moment-level repeated measures (Level-1, 1,546 observations: 5 observations per day for 7 days) are nested within participants (Level-2, 53 participants). To take into account the resulting correlated errors, two-level linear mixed effects models were used to test hypotheses. Results indicate that, at the within person-level, task characteristics (e.g., challenge, variety, significance, feedback) and role engagement (i.e., the subjective experience of high levels of interest, energy and absorption) partially mediated the relationship between work/volunteering and momentary or daily fluctuations in perceived physical health, negative affect, and happiness.

Implications. Findings suggest that there are important nuances in the extent to which productive activity in later life is health promoting that large population-based studies might be missing. This study also explored how engagement responds to environmental changes at the momentary level, which is a crucial precursor to the design of interventions to improve engagement among older adults and can inform engagement-related interventions that have the potential to facilitate positive changes in the lives of older adults. Implications for social work policy and practice will be discussed.