Capturing Successful Aging in Daily Life: Exploring the Intensive Longitudinal Findings From a U.S. National Sample

Thus far, successful aging has been conceptualized and operationalized as a relatively static construct. Investigating daily successful aging provides a dynamic approach highlighting how successful aging can be achieved through everyday actions, giving older adults a stronger sense of control over their lives.

We used 8-day diary data from Midlife in the United States 2's U.S. national sample of older adults (N = 716, Mage[standard deviation, SD] = 68.80[6.45]). Participants reported daily physical symptoms, functioning, and engagement in life (collectively, successful aging indicators), alongside daily stressors and positive events. We also correlated the personal mean and standard deviation of the indicators with 1-time measures of health and well-being.

Intraclass correlation revealed substantial within-person variability in successful aging indicators. These indicators were associated with daily stressors and positive events. One-time health and well-being indicators were positively associated with personal mean levels of successful aging, although their correlations with personal SDs were less consistent.

Intraindividual variations in successful aging as everyday symptoms, functioning, and engagement with life are observable among a national sample of older adults, challenging the static view of successful aging and, instead, emphasizing the need to understand "micro-level" contributors of successful aging.