title: Depression and the sense of control: aging vectors, trajectories, and trends.
abstract: Adulthood trajectories of outcomes such as depression and the sense of control measure aspects of the human condition that Americans may view as objects of change. Social science should provide information on that progress, or its absence. Whether these trajectories change their shape, and how and why if they do, is important theoretically too. A range of birth cohorts coexist in time, place, and social relationship. Each cohort, as it goes through adulthood, follows in aggregate a path left by older ones, reshaping that path as it goes. The shapes of the trajectories, and the trends reshaping them, represent two inseparable aspects of the same phenomenon. This report describes methods for mapping aging trajectories and intercohort trends, using linear latent-growth models of relatively brief follow-up data (six years in the examples). The author reviews shared research ideals that led to the model: put theory into modeling, go where the data lead, use what you have, go beyond where you have been, and risk being precisely wrong.
authors: 1Department of Sociology and Population Research Center, University of Texas, Austin, TX, USA.
authors: John
authors: J
authors: Mirowsky
mesh_terms: D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000375:Aging / Q000502:physiology / Q000523:psychology*; D015992:Body Mass Index; D015331:Cohort Studies; D003866:Depressive Disorder / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D006305:Health Status Indicators; D006801:Humans; D007389:Internal-External Control; D008016:Life Change Events; D016014:Linear Models; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010553:Personality Development; D011582:Psychological Theory; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D016019:Survival Analysis; D014481:United States; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: accelerated longitudinal design; age-period-cohort; aging vectors; depression; growth curves; sense of control; structural equation models; synthetic-cohort and virtual-cohort models; trajectories and trends; trend function