Correlates of senior center participation: a national analysis

This paper presents results of a logit regression analysis of the correlates of senior center participation for a national sample of 13,737 elders from the Supplement on Aging of the 1984 National Health Interview Survey. Significant characteristics were higher levels of social interaction, decreasing income, living alone, fewer ADL-IADL difficulties, being female, and living in suburbs and rural nonfarm areas. Curvilinear relationships between center use and age and education were found. Race, self-reported health status, and residence in urban and rural farm areas were nonsignificant when the other variables were controlled.