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Spousal Social Activity Trajectories in the Australian Longitudinal Study of Ageing in the Context of Cognitive, Physical, and Affective Resources

¹ School of Psychology, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta.
² Department of Human Development and Family Studies, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park.
³ Centre for Ageing Studies, Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia.

Address correspondence to Christiane A. Hoppmann, Georgia Institute of Technology, School of Psychology, 654 Cherry Street, Atlanta, GA 30332. E-mail: ch295{at}mail.gatech.edu

We examined the dyadic interdependence of spousal social activity trajectories over 11 years by using longitudinal data on 565 couples from the Australian Longitudinal Study of Ageing (M_age = 76 years at Time 1). Social activity trajectories were interrelated in elderly couples, and they depended not only on individual but also on spousal cognitive, physical, and affective resources at baseline. Most associations examined were similar in husbands and wives. However, wives performed more social activities and displayed different depression–social activity associations than did husbands. We found stronger within-couple associations in the domain of social activities than for cognition. Our findings illustrate the important role of social relationships for late-life development and suggest that the mechanisms involved in dyadic interdependencies may be domain and gender specific.

Key Words: Successful aging • Social activities • Couples • Growth curve modeling