Successful aging according to older adults

Successful aging has been theorized to be a process by some and a result by others. Very few studies have actually asked older adults what successful aging means to them. In this study, 256 older adults living in a Continuing Care Retirement Community were asked to first rate themselves on a scale from zero (unsuccessful) to ten (very successful) as to how successfully they have aged and then to (1) describe the actions they have taken in the past year to help them age successfully and (2) describe aging successfully. The self-rating of successful aging produced a mean of 8.1 (1.4) and a median and mode of 8. Content analysis was performed on the two qualitative questions to identify themes. The top three themes that emerged from the first question were remaining active (56.6%, n=145), remaining healthy (29.3%, n=75) and socialization (19.9%, n=51). Maintaining a good diet, staying mentally alert and seeing a physician also emerged as actions older adults take to help them age successfully. The second question revealed the top themes in describing successful aging to be acceptance (38.3%, n=98), maintaining health (32.4%, n=83), and being active (27.3%, n= 70). Additional themes that were mentioned in defining successful aging by more than 20% of respondents were independence, mental alertness and socialization. Based on these results successful aging, according to older adults, is the process of acceptance of change and the result of actions taken.