Lifestyle and Morale in the Southern Rural Aged.

Recent theory and research in social gerontology have placed major emphasis on the relationship between activity and morale. Many dimensions and measures of activity have been employed in this research literature. The present research focuses on the lifestyle dimension, following the Maddox (1975) definition of lifestyle as systematic patterns of activity, and attempts to operationalize this concept in a systematic fashion. First, smallest space analysis is applied to data on the activities of a sample of Southern rural aged, identifying two distinct lifestyles. Next, measures of participation in these lifestyles are included as intervening variables in a multivariate causal analysis of the social determinants of individual morale. The results of this analysis suggest that the impact of activity for morale depends on the social organization of activity in the local setting. If so, this organization of activity, or lifestyle dimension, is critical to analyses of the relationship between activity and morale. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]