Assessing Health Differences in an Elderly Population: A Five‐year Follow‐up

A sample of several hundred elderly residents of Alameda County was recontacted after 5 years to determine the effects over time of different social support and demographic variables on health status. The follow‐up investigation demonstrated a strong relationship between respondents' social support resources in 1980 and their subsequent self‐rated health. Indeed, social contacts in 1980, together with age and financial need, enabled us to correctly “predict” respondents' subsequent health status in close to two‐thirds of the cases. As anticipated, however, the variable most strongly associated with self‐rated health in the earlier cross‐sectional study — illness of a mate during the preceding 6 months — disappeared as a predictor variable in the longitudinal study. This finding is in keeping with the literature on bereavement and other stressful life events which demonstrates that the health impact of such stressors is in most cases time‐limited. The study findings support earlier research demonstrating the important role of social support for health maintenance and disease prevention in the elderly. They further underscore the need for intervention strategies designed to strengthen the network resources of those elders at high risk for social isolation.