Awareness of age-related change in very different cultural-political contexts: A cross-cultural examination of aging in Burkina Faso and Germany

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Abstract

Combining recent developments in research on personal views on aging (VoA) and a cross-country comparative approach, this study examined awareness of age-related change (AARC) in samples from rural Burkina Faso and Germany. The aims of this study were (1) to examine for an assumed proportional shift in the relationship between gains/losses toward more losses as predicted by life span psychology; (2) to estimate the association between AARC dimensions and subjective age; and (3) to examine the association between health variables and AARC. A cross-sectional method involving a large, representative sample from rural Burkina Faso that included participants aged 40 and older ( N = 3,028) and a smaller convenience sample of German respondents aged 50 years and older ( N = 541) were used to address these questions. A proportional shift toward more AARC-losses was more clearly observable in the sample from Burkina Faso as compared to the German reference. In both samples, subjective age was consistently more strongly related to AARC-losses than to AARC-gains. Within the sample from Burkina Faso, differential associations of AARC-gains and AARC-losses to health variables could be shown. In conclusion, the findings support key tenets of life span psychology including that age-related gains occur even late in life and that a shift toward more losses occurs with increasing age. Also, feeling subjectively younger may indeed be more strongly guided by lowered negative aging experiences than by increased positive ones.

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A short battery of physical performance tests was used to assess lower extremity function in more than 5,000 persons age 71 years and older in three communities. Balance, gait, strength, and endurance were evaluated by examining ability to stand with the feet together in the side-by-side, semi-tandem, and tandem positions, time to walk 8 feet, and time to rise from a chair and return to the seated position 5 times. A wide distribution of performance was observed for each test. Each test and a summary performance scale, created by summing categorical rankings of performance on each test, were strongly associated with self-report of disability. Both self-report items and performance tests were independent predictors of short-term mortality and nursing home admission in multivariate analyses. However, evidence is presented that the performance tests provide information not available from self-report items. Of particular importance is the finding that in those at the high end of the functional spectrum, who reported almost no disability, the performance test scores distinguished a gradient of risk for mortality and nursing home admission. Additionally, within subgroups with identical self-report profiles, there were systematic differences in physical performance related to age and sex. This study provides evidence that performance measures can validly characterize older persons across a broad spectrum of lower extremity function. Performance and self-report measures may complement each other in providing useful information about functional status.

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Author and article information

Contributors

Anton Schönstein: URI : http://loop.frontiersin.org/people/1627079/overview

Anna Schlomann: URI : http://loop.frontiersin.org/people/1146980/overview

Hans-Werner Wahl: URI : http://loop.frontiersin.org/people/1140202/overview

Till Bärnighausen: URI : http://loop.frontiersin.org/people/1438746/overview

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): Front Psychiatry

Journal ID (iso-abbrev): Front Psychiatry

Journal ID (publisher-id): Front. Psychiatry

Title: Frontiers in Psychiatry

Publisher: Frontiers Media S.A.

ISSN (Electronic): 1664-0640

Publication date (Electronic): 20 January 2023

Publication date Collection: 2022

Volume: 13

Electronic Location Identifier: 928564

Affiliations

[1] ¹Network Aging Research, Heidelberg University , Heidelberg, Germany

[2] ²Department of Psychology, Mannheim University , Mannheim, Germany

[3] ³Institute for Educational Sciences, Heidelberg University of Education , Heidelberg, Germany

[4] ⁴Institute of Psychology, Heidelberg University , Heidelberg, Germany

[5] ⁵Heidelberg University , Heidelberg, Germany

Author notes

Edited by: Cristiano Capurso, University of Foggia, Italy

Reviewed by: Mina Konigsberg, Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, Mexico; Suwanna Arunpongpaisal, Khon Kaen University, Thailand

*Correspondence: Anton Schönstein ✉ schoenstein@ 123456nar.uni-heidelberg.de

This article was submitted to Aging Psychiatry, a section of the journal Frontiers in Psychiatry

†These authors have contributed equally to this work

Article

DOI: 10.3389/fpsyt.2022.928564

PMC ID: 9894898

SO-VID: 65c3543a-d694-420a-a5d7-1fdd2ff79719

License:

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

History

Date received : 25 April 2022

Date accepted : 20 December 2022

Page count

Figures: 1, Tables: 3, Equations: 0, References: 56, Pages: 11, Words: 8193

Funding

Funded by: Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung, doi 10.13039/100005156;

The Aging in Nouna, Burkina Faso study was supported by a grant from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation as part of the Alexander von Humboldt Professorship dedicated to TB, Heidelberg University. The data collection for the German study was made possible by funding from the Carl Zeiss Foundation (Project P2017-01-002; HEIAGE, Heidelberg University, Germany) and a Humboldt Research Award to Manfred Diehl and H-WW based on their Transcoop funding scheme. For the publication fee we acknowledge financial support by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft within the funding programme-Open Access Publikationskosten as well as by Heidelberg University.

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