This project will collect and analyse new and unique data on the objective and subjective characteristics of events within older individuals’ daily time-use patterns. Day-to-day experiences along with their subjective evaluation shape older adults’ quality of life and determine their valuation of life and subjective well-being. The project aspires to be a benchmark study using new data collection techniques and a new methodological approach that gives voice to the respondents.

In 2030 nearly 30% of the European population will be aged 60 and above. Population ageing has been identified by the European Commission as one of the social challenges of the 21st century. However, ageing does not mean an inevitable decline of abilities and detachment from active life. Furthermore, social and environmental context is no less important for enjoying later life than physical health. The concept of Successful Ageing has emerged through empirical research on how successfully individuals can cope with increasing limitations and challenges inherent to older age.

Everyday activities play an essential role in older adults’ quality of life and successful ageing. Scholarly models of successful ageing typically comprise the following components: physical health as measured by low risk of disease or disability; good mental and physical function; and continued engagement with life, including relations with others and productive activity (Rowe & Khan 1998). These overlap with what senior citizens see as detrimental to their quality of life, but in their case ,the emphasis is placed on different factors. According to the study based on the British Quality of Life Survey (Gabriel & Bowling 2004), these are the following: social relations, living in a safe and pleasant home and neighbourhood with good local facilities, access to quality transportation, solo hobbies and leisure activities, and social and community activities.

Individual’s Valuation of Life (VOL), or, in other words, how long they would like to live, is also strongly associated with people’s daily activities: ‘The way that old people behave and evaluate their time use has emerged (…) as a central aspect of quality-of-life mediating changes in VOL’ (Moss, et al. 2007).

This project uses advanced statistical methods to analyse objective and subjective accounts of everyday experiences of adults aged 65+ and link them with daily structures of time-use, quality of life, and psychosocial wellbeing. It uses time-use methodology, but unlike standard time-use surveys, it does not sample entire sequences but randomly selected events over the day. The detailed behavioural data is then analysed jointly with end-of-the-day reports. End-of-the-day accounts include information on general subjective well-being over a given day as well as on temporal anchors that is events around which individuals have planned other daily activities. This study gives voice to the respondents and asks not only about their experiences but also what they mean to them and whether they are a meaningful way of spending their time.

Fig 1. Time-use sequences by time point (24 hours account). EJ’s computations.

Project objectives

This study aims to investigate

1) how older adults organize their days,

2) how particular daily events are experienced by them, and

3) how objective events and their subjective evaluation are linked with individual’s sociodemographic characteristics and their subjective wellbeing (SWB)

The activity theory of ageing states that maintaining active involvement in daily life allows older adults enjoying their later life and boosts their wellbeing and sense of connectedness. Thus far little is known about how older adults organize their time, adapt to changes and their increasing limitations, as well as about they redefine their social roles through what they do every single day. Meanwhile, ultimately it is daily behaviours that make life worth living for many older adults (Moss et al. 2007). Exploring the meaning, outcomes and covariates of those behaviours is the overarching objective of this study.

PI’s bio

Ewa obtained her PhD in 2015 from the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences. Prior to her Marie Curie fellowship at SYNYO she was a postdoctoral fellow in the Centre for Time Use Research at the University of Oxford, UK, and a graduate Fulbright researcher at the Department of Sociology, University of Maryland.

She decided to do her MSCA in SYNYO because of the company’s focus on older adults and its expertise in new research techniques such as smartphone-based data collection.

Ewa’s research interests include time use, temporal perspective, ageing, social inequality, health and subjective wellbeing. Her publications are available at: https://scholar.google.pl/citations?user=h2iAZQMAAAAJ&hl=en

References

Gabriel, Z., & Bowling, A. (2004). Quality of life from the perspectives of older people. Ageing & Society 24, 675-691.

Moss, M.,S., Hoffman, Ch., J., Mossey, J., Rovine, M. (2007). Changes Over 4 Years in Health, Quality of Life, Mental Health, and Valuation or Life. Journal of Ageing & Health 19(6), 1025-1044.

Rowe, J. W., & Khan, R. L. (1998). Successful aging. New York, NY: Pantheon Books.

Keywords

Successful ageing, subjective wellbeing, older adults, time use, Experience Sampling Method