Relationship Between Self-Rated Successful Aging and Objective Measures of Aging

Self-ratings of successful aging (SA) by older adults tend to be much higher than objective measures generated by medical professionals and gerontologists. In this study, we asked a convenience sample of 439 independent living older adults (M age = 80.7; sd = 6.1; 74% female) to rate how successfully they were aging on a scale from 0 = not successfully to 10 = very successfully. The average rating was 8.1 (sd = 1.4). Using linear regression, after controlling for age and education level, seven factors were regressed on the self-rating of SA: 1) number of major diseases, 2) ADL disability index, 3) cognition, 4) physical function, 5) walking activity, 6) community activity, and 7) life satisfaction. In the final model, the significant variables were age (â=.17), disease (â=-.11), cognition (â=.12), physical function (â=-.17), and life satisfaction (â=.32), explaining 22.3% of the variance in self-rated SA. In this sample of older adults, life satisfaction, a psychological variable, had the greatest influence on SA. A greater understanding of how older adults subjectively view SA, especially when correlated with objective functional measures, may enable public health experts to better define and pursue targets for both policy- and practice-driven investments in healthy aging.