What contributes to perceived stress in later life? A recursive partitioning approach.

One possible explanation for the individual differences in outcomes of stress is the diversity of inputs that produce perceptions of being stressed. The current study examines how combinations of contextual features (e.g., social isolation, neighborhood quality, health problems, age discrimination, financial concerns, and recent life events) of later life contribute to overall feelings of stress. Recursive partitioning techniques (regression trees and random forests) were used to examine unique interrelations between predictors of perceived stress in a sample of 282 community-dwelling adults. Trees provided possible examples of equifinality (i.e., subsets of people with similar levels of perceived stress but different predictors) as well as identification both of contextual combinations that separated participants with very high and very low perceived stress. Random forest analyses aggregated across many trees based on permuted versions of the data and predictors; loneliness, financial strain, neighborhood strain, ageism, and to some extent life events emerged as important predictors. Interviews with a subsample of participants provided both thick description of the complex relationships identified in the trees, as well as additional risks not appearing in the survey results. Together, the analyses highlight what may be missed when stress is used as a simple unidimensional construct and can guide differential intervention efforts.

How Does Religiosity Enhance Well-Being? The Role of Perceived Control.

Religiousness and spirituality (R/S) are consistently linked with positive indicators of well-being, but the mechanisms behind these associations remain largely unknown. We hypothesize that an individual's level of perceived control (PC) acts as a mediator of this relationship and that this effect is stronger in older adults. Participants were 529 adults from the Notre Dame Study of Health and Well-Being (aged 31-88). Regression analyses tested both mediating and moderating functions of PC for three different R/S components (religious practices, daily spiritual experiences, and religious/spiritual coping); composite variables were used for PC and subjective well-being (SWB) in all analyses. These effects were tested using the full sample, as well as separately by age group (early midlife, aged 31-49; late midlife, aged 50-59; and later life, aged 60 and over), in order to discover any age differences that may exist. Results revealed differences by both R/S dimension and age group: PC partially mediated the religious practices-SWB relationship in the full sample and in the later life group; the effects of religious/spiritual coping and spiritual experiences on SWB were partially mediated by PC in the full sample, the late midlife group, and the later life group; and none of the R/S-SWB relationships were mediated in the early midlife group. Moderating effects were indicated by significant interactions between PC and spiritual experiences in the full sample, PC and religious coping in the full sample, and PC and religious practices in the later life group.