Assessing the factor structure of well-being in older adults: findings from the National Health and Aging Trends Study

Objectives: Well-being has been conceptualized as a two-dimensional construct that includes both hedonic and eudaimonic components. To date, existing measures of well-being may not adequately capture both of these components for older adults, and limited literature has explored whether the two constructs can be integrated into one factor to measure well-being in this population.

Method: This study examined the factor structure of the 11 well-being items from the National Health and Aging Trends Study (NHATS), a nationally representative panel study of Medicare recipients in the US. Using data from the 2011 wave, we divided the community-dwelling sample into two random subsamples, testing our theory in sample 1 (n = 3305) and examining the replicability of the solution in sample 2 (n = 3297).

Results: We conducted confirmatory factor analyses using a correlated uniqueness approach to account for the frequency and negatively worded method effects. The findings from sample 1 indicated that the single factor structure was a superior fit to the data, and the solution was confirmed by sample 2 [χ(2)(33) = 85.002, p < .001, RMSEA = 0.022 (90% CI = 0.016-0.028), CFI = 0.993, TLI = 0.989, WRMR = 0.831].

Conclusion: Findings suggest that although the hedonic and eudaimonic components of well-being may be conceptually distinct, they are highly correlated in the NHATS well-being measures and should be measured as a single construct. Implications for future research using the NHATS and research using other data sources and focusing on other populations are discussed.