Cognitive Functioning, Health Screening Behaviors and Desire to Improve One’s Health in Diabetic versus Healthy Older Women
Year: 2017
Type: article
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: AIMS: To attempt to fill a gap in the literature on diabetic versus healthy older women on desire to improve one's health, health screening behaviors, and cognitive health. STUDY DESIGN: Between-subjects design. PLACE AND DURATION OF STUDY: Department of Psychology, California State University Northridge, between July 2013 and June 2015. METHODOLOGY: =50-90) were multiethnic, non-institutionalized women over the age of 50 residing in Los Angeles County who completed our research packet. The latter contained the first author's demographics list and her original structured interview protocol on older women's health, as well as the well-known Mini-Cog. RESULTS: =.05]. CONCLUSION: We have established a significant relationship between diabetes and a) desire to improve one's health and b) health screening behaviors, as well as c) cognitive impairment (at a marginally significant level) among diabetic versus healthy women. This has important clinical and public health implications. Although the findings of prior research suggest that diabetic older women often experience impaired cognitive performance compared to healthy older women, our marginally significant results showed that the opposite is true, at least in our ethnically diverse sample of modest size. Moreover, we found that diabetic older women desired to improve their health significantly more than healthy women and pursued cancer screenings and general health screenings more than their healthy counterpart. The limited size of our sample does not allow for generalizations of our findings. Additional research with larger samples is definitely needed to investigate these topics further.
Language: English
Subfield: Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism
Field: Medicine
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W2749257119