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European Journal of Ageing
Published in: European Journal of Ageing 4/2015

01-12-2015

Long-term and short-term predictors of worries about getting Alzheimer’s disease

Authors: Stephen J. Cutler, Corina Brăgaru

Published in: European Journal of Ageing | Issue 4/2015

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Abstract

Cumulative stresses associated with concerns about cognitive functioning and worries about developing Alzheimer’s disease (AD) have been shown to be related to poorer health and lower psychological well-being. Among older persons, AD also generates higher levels of fear than any other disease. But much remains to be learned about predictors of worries and fears, especially from a temporal perspective. Thus, the principal objective of the current research is to examine long-term effects of self-perceptions of cognitive functioning on worries about developing AD. Data for the study are drawn from the University of Michigan’s Health and Retirement Study. We use up to ten measurements of self-perceived cognitive functioning collected from 1992 to 2010 for respondents 50 years of age and older at the time of their entrance into the study. Demographics (marital status, age, education, and gender); beliefs about the role of genetics, personal knowledge of someone with AD, and their interaction; and depression and health are other variables included in the model. The data are analyzed using the full information maximum likelihood procedure and latent growth curve modeling to account for the long-term effects. The analysis shows evidence of both short-term effects of depression, age, beliefs, and the interaction of beliefs and personal familiarity and long-term effects of cognitive self-assessment on worries about getting AD. Further analyses of these relationships and inclusion of these items in other studies are recommended.
Footnotes
1
This conclusion of the U.S. National Institutes of Health state-of-the-science conference on preventing AD and cognitive decline reported in Daviglus et al. (2010) represents one perspective. On the other hand, a recent report from Alzheimer’s Disease International (Prince et al. 2014) suggests that the risk of dementia may be modifiable through selected behavioral interventions. This article is not the place to reconcile these divergent conclusions, although sorting out the evidence for such conflicting positions will without doubt be a high-priority agenda item.
 
2
Although a version of data from Wave 11 (2012) has been released, it could not be used in this study because our principal dependent variable, R’s worry about getting AD, was not asked in Wave 11 nor in any wave other than Wave 10.
 
3
Another measure of cognitive assessment asked over the entire span refers to a comparison of memory functioning between the current time and 2 years earlier. For a variety of reasons, but mainly because the analytic approach we use in the study will already capture change and rate of change in self-reported memory, we have elected to exclude these measures of self-reported, two-year changes in memory functioning.
 
4
Prior work (e.g., Pearman and Storandt 2005; Steinberg et al. 2013; Johansson et al. 2014) has also concluded that selected personality variables associated with subjective memory complaints and concerns about AD may be relevant controls. We tried to represent this focus in the present study by including neuroticism as a control variable, but we were unable to do so because the split-ballot nature of HRS meant there was only minimal overlap between Rs who responded to the neuroticism items and Rs who responded to the topical module on AD concerns.
 
5
Distributional characteristics on the measures used in the analysis are presented in Tables 1, 2, and 3 and discussed in the “Results” section.
 
6
As used here, the responses to this item (as well as to the following item on memory assessment) were reverse scored compared to the original version.
 
7
We also included age2 to assess whether there is a curvilinear relationship between age and worries about getting AD, but the effect of this multiplicative term on worries proved to be nonsignificant.
 
8
To determine whether multicollinearity might be a potential problem, we examined the correlation matrix of all variables included in the study. Because only one of the coefficients exceeded .6 (.618) and because all of the remaining coefficients were below .6, with most of them being well below that level, we concluded that multicollinearity was not likely to be a problem.
 
9
For additional information on these and other investigations that are referred to as the HRS “family” of studies, see http://​gateway.​usc.​edu/​ and http://​grants.​nih.​gov/​grants/​guide/​rfa-files/​RFA-AG-15-015.​html.
 
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Metadata
Title
Long-term and short-term predictors of worries about getting Alzheimer’s disease
Authors
Stephen J. Cutler
Corina Brăgaru
Publication date
01-12-2015
Publisher
Springer Netherlands
Published in
European Journal of Ageing / Issue 4/2015
Print ISSN: 1613-9372
Electronic ISSN: 1613-9380
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10433-015-0350-3

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