ArticleThe journals of gerontology. Series A, Biological sciences and medical sciences2012
An examination of healthy aging across a conceptual continuum: prevalence estimates, demographic patterns, and validity.
Article in The journals of gerontology. Series A, Biological sciences and medical sciences, 2012. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. It is linked to trial NCT06204224 (Personal Variables Affecting the Successful Aging Level of Individuals Age of Sixty and Over), which is not on this map. Cited by 54 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Personal Variables Affecting the Successful Aging Level of Individuals Age of Sixty and Over
Who cites it
54 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Successful aging and its discontents: a systematic review of the social gerontology literature.The Gerontologist · 2015Pooled it
- Sleep and Healthy Aging: A Systematic Review and Path Forward.Clinical gerontologistPooled it
- Prevalence of healthy aging among community dwelling adults age 70 and older from five European countries.BMC geriatrics · 2022Trial
- Population Priorities for Successful Aging: A Randomized Vignette Experiment.The journals of gerontology. Series B, Psychological sciences and social sciences · 2020Trial
- Multimorbidity and functioning disparities in retired older adults: longitudinal trajectories, disease clusters, and mediating mechanisms.BMC geriatrics · 2026Article
- Article
- The relationship between socioeconomic factors, social participation, behaviours, and healthy ageing: an analysis of longitudinal data.Frontiers in public health · 2026Article
- Article
- The Nutritional Pathway Between Tooth Loss and Healthy Ageing: A Longitudinal Study of Older American Adults.Nutrients · 2025Article
- Prevalence and associated factors of healthy aging among community-dwelling older adults in Lishui city, China: a cross-sectional study.BMC public health · 2025Article
- Prevalence and related factors of healthy aging: A systematic review and meta-analysis.Belitung nursing journal · 2025Review
- Physical activity dynamically moderates the impact of multimorbidity on the trajectory of healthy aging over sixteen years.BMC geriatrics · 2024Article
- Measuring functional ability in Healthy Ageing: testing its validity using Japanese nationwide longitudinal data.Age and ageing · 2024Article
- "Think positive and don't die alone" - Foreign-born, South Asian older adults' perceptions on healthy aging.International journal of qualitative studies on health and well-being · 2023Article
- Measurement of healthy ageing.Age and ageing · 2023Article
- Article
- Public perception on 'healthy ageing' in the past decade: An unsupervised machine learning of 63,809 Twitter posts.Heliyon · 2023Article
- Determinants of Healthy and Active Ageing in Korea.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Article
- Preserving independence among under-resourced older adults in the Southeastern United States: existing barriers and potential strategies for research.International journal for equity in health · 2022Review
- Midlife Work Limitations are Associated with Lower Odds of Survival and Healthy Aging.The journals of gerontology. Series B, Psychological sciences and social sciences · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundAlthough the notion of healthy aging has gained wide acceptance in gerontology, measuring the phenomenon is challenging. Guided by a prominent conceptualization of healthy aging, we examined how shifting from a more to less stringent definition of healthy aging influences prevalence estimates, demographic patterns, and validity.
methodsData are from adults aged 65 years and older who participated in the Health and Retirement Study. We examined four operational definitions of healthy aging. For each, we calculated prevalence estimates and examined the odds of healthy aging by age, education, gender, and race-ethnicity in 2006. We also examined the association between healthy aging and both self-rated health and death.
resultsAcross definitions, the prevalence of healthy aging ranged from 3.3% to 35.5%. For all definitions, those classified as experiencing healthy aging had lower odds of fair or poor self-rated health and death over an 8-year period. The odds of being classified as "healthy" were lower among those of advanced age, those with less education, and women than for their corresponding counterparts across all definitions.
conclusionsMoving across the conceptual continuum--from a more to less rigid definition of healthy aging--markedly increases the measured prevalence of healthy aging. Importantly, results suggest that all examined definitions identified a subgroup of older adults who had substantially lower odds of reporting fair or poor health and dying over an 8-year period, providing evidence of the validity of our definitions. Conceptualizations that emphasize symptomatic disease and functional health may be particularly useful for public health purposes.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.