2005/09/21 by Alex H. S. Harris, Carl E. Thoresen · 3 citations
Social Sciences · Health Professions · Medicine · Psychology · #Health disparities and outcomes #Health and Wellbeing Research #Geriatric Care and Nursing Homes #Longitudinal study #Demographics #Gerontology #Proportional hazards model #Demography #Medicine #Longitudinal sample #Longitudinal data #Psychology #Developmental psychology #Internal medicine
paper · doi:10.1177/1359105305057310
openalex publication_date 2005/09/21 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/11
The Longitudinal Study of Aging (LSOA) assessed the health and social functioning of a representative sample of 7527 American community-dwelling older people (>70 years). We tested the hypothesis that frequent volunteering is associated with less mortality risk when the effects of socio-demographics, medical status, physical activity and social integration are controlled. We used Cox proportional hazards analyses to assess the unadjusted and adjusted associations between frequency of volunteering and time-to-death (96-month follow-up). Death occurred in 38.3 percent of the sample. After adjusting for covariates, frequent volunteers had significantly reduced mortality compared to non-volunteers. This association was greatest for those who frequently visited with friends or attended religious services.