title: Age variations in personal agency and self-esteem: the context of physical disability.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  This study examines how age patterns in health control, self-efficacy, and self-esteem are influenced by age-correlated social status, health, personality, and social integration variables.
  
  
  METHODS
  Ordinary least squares regression documents age patterns in data from a 1985 community sample of 1,549 physically disabled and nondisabled individuals from southwestern Ontario, Canada.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Older respondents report lower health control, self-efficacy, and self-esteem. Less education, more physical impairment, poorer global health, less empathy, and less introspectiveness explain about 43% of age's negative association with health control and more than half of its negative association with self-esteem. In addition, age is associated more negatively with self-efficacy among the disabled. Social status variables conceal the strength of the age-by-disability interaction coefficient, while health accounts for almost an equal amount.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The findings describe how age-correlated personal and social factors contribute to, or statistically conceal, older adults' sense of health control, self-efficacy, and self-esteem.
authors.affiliation: University of Maryland, USA. sschieman@socy.umd.edu
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Schieman
authors.forename: J E
authors.initials: JE
authors.lastname: Campbell
mesh_terms: D000367:Age Factors; D002170:Canada; D006233:Persons with Disabilities; D006304:Health Status; D006801:Humans; D016018:Least-Squares Analysis; D010551:Personality; D012649:Self Concept; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors