Exploring profiles of social support sources among longevity achievers: Links to loneliness in very late life

Abstract To date, sparse literature exists exploring different patterns of social support levels among oldest-old adults, leaving some questions of whether all longevity achievers are those who have high support levels from various sources, or if there is a group of oldest-old adults who are at the highest risk of being exposed to high loneliness levels due to unavailable support from a particular source (e.g., spouse or children). The current study aimed to explore distinct profiles of social support received from four different sources (i.e., spouse, children, friends, and other family members) and how the obtained profiles are associated with loneliness among oldest-old adults. Oldest-old adults who survived to 80 years or older from the Health and Retirement Study and who provided data from 2008 were included in the present study (N = 1484). Latent profile analyses were first computed to obtain different patterns of support levels perceived from four sources, and mean difference tests were also computed to analyze how each profile was associated with mean loneliness levels. The results indicated that the four-profiles obtained has the best solution. The four profiles model was selected based on the distinct patterns among the classes: Low Spouse Support, Low Children Support (LCS), Low Family Support, and All High Support (AHS) groups were obtained. The AHS group was associated with lower loneliness levels, and the LCS group was likely to have the highest level of loneliness. The findings of the present study can contribute to community-level intervention programs that target older adults or oldest-old adults with high levels of loneliness by taking into consideration their available social support sources and actual support levels perceived from each available source, especially focusing on those who perceive low levels of support from children. Particularly, policymakers should consider prioritizing enhancing intergenerational connections between older parents and adult children, which can enable a regular check-in system for older adults on their available support networks and evaluations of their psychological health, like loneliness and depressive symptoms.