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Life Satisfaction, Affect, and Belonging in Older Adults

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Abstract

Prior research has identified the need for a greater understanding of the individual utility of independent subjective well-being factors. This article explores the effect of positive affect, negative affect, and feelings of belonging on life satisfaction among older adults in the United States. Ordinal regression analysis identified that positive affect demonstrated more predictive power in predictive overall life satisfaction than negative affect or feeling of belonging. Correlations were found between life satisfaction and positive affect, negative affect, and feeling of belonging. These findings indicate that interventions aimed to increase quality of life among older adults can improve life satisfaction, while still providing secondary benefits in decreasing negative affect and increasing feelings of belonging. This research suggests that applied quality of life studies to improve lives of seniors focus on interventions that increase positive affect. Where interventions have not yet been measured, this study suggests that measuring changes in participant positive affect could be simple method of identifying the potential for a program’s utility in increasing life satisfaction.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Antioch University, Seattle, USA

    Brooke Massey

  2. The Happiness Alliance, Seattle, USA

    Alice Vo Edwards & Laura Musikanski

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  1. Brooke Massey
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  2. Alice Vo Edwards
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Correspondence to Brooke Massey or Alice Vo Edwards.

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Conflict of Interest

Laura Musikansi is the director of the Happiness Alliance, the organization that provides the online survey, the Happiness Index, the data from which this study is based. Alice Vo Edwards has been a volunteer researcher for the Happiness Index.

Disclosure

Brook Massey performed the original research as part of her PsyD dissertation studies; no prior papers have been published from this research. Massey and Edwards wrote the first draft of the paper while all three authors provided feedback and edits to the final version.

Research Involving Human Participants and/or Animals

The study was conducted in accordance with principles for human experimentation as defined in the Declaration of Helsinki and the Happiness Index survey methodology has been reviewed by multiple institutional review boards at several universities prior to this research being conducted. This study used the reflective method of reviewing data that was previously gathered.

Informed Consent

None. No personally identifiable data was utilized. This type of study does not require informed consent due to the anonymity of the data.

Research Data Access

Researchers desiring to access the data may contact Laura Musikanski at laura@happycounts.org.

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Massey, B., Edwards, A.V. & Musikanski, L. Life Satisfaction, Affect, and Belonging in Older Adults. Applied Research Quality Life 16, 1205–1219 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11482-019-09804-2

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