Psychosocial Predictors of Disability in African American Women

Walker, Janiece L.

Saturday, 16 November 2013

Janiece L. Walker, MSN, RN
School of Nursing, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX
MIchael P. Cary Jr., PhD, RN
School of Nursing, Duke University, Durham, NC
Roland J. Thorpe Jr., PhD
The John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, John Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD
Keith E. Whitfield, PhD
Academic Affairs, Duke University, Durham, NC

Learning Objective 1: The learner will be able to identify two psychosocial predictors of disability in African American women.

Learning Objective 2: The learner will gain an understanding of conducting within group examinations of gender and ethnic/racial groups.

Purpose: African American women make up 20% of approximately 27 million women who are disabled in the U.S. African American women who are disabled have poorer overall health and higher mortality rates than women of other racial/ethnic groups. Various factors are associated with disability in African American women. Disability rates have been found to increase as African American women age and as their body mass index increases, however, little is known about what psychosocial factors may contribute to disability in this population. The purpose of this study was to determine if life satisfaction, life events, depression, and emotional satisfaction with social support were predictors of disability among African American women.

Design: This retrospective, correlational design used secondary data from the Carolina African American Twin Study of Aging (CAATSA-NIA- RO1-AG13662).

Methods: Descriptive statistics were calculated for study variables. Multiple logistic regression was used to determine the association between psychosocial factors and disability. For this study, we included one randomly selected individual from each pair of female twins, as well as members of non-intact twin pairs from the sample of the main study, which resulted in 204 women. The average age of the sample was 49.8 years (SD=14.4).

Findings: Data suggest that life satisfaction and life events were significant predictors of disability in African American women. Specifically, negative life events (β=. 075, p<. 05) and poorer life satisfaction (β=-.106, p<. 01) were associated with higher disability in this sample.

Conclusion: The findings of this study support that negative life events and poor life satisfaction are associated with disability in African American women. African American women who are disabled may be predisposed to poor health outcomes, which may lead to negative consequences of psychosocial factors. More research is needed to better understand the association between psychosocial variables and disability in this population.

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