Relating Sensory, Cognitive, and Neural Factors to Older Persons’ Perceptions about Happiness: An Exploratory Study

Table 5

Predictors of response patterns: results of multivariate regression models.

Model variables	“Happy” task score^a		Proportion of responses belonging to the “social relationship” domain		Proportion of responses belonging to the “avocation/hobbies” domain
	β	P	β	p	β	p
Age	−0.01	0.93	−0.20	0.05	0.00	0.08
Gender	0.97	0.29	0.10	0.28	0.06	0.12
Education level	0.38	0.37	0.08			0.89
< High school	—	—	0.18	—	−0.02	—
High school	—	—	0.17	—	−0.04	—
College	—	—	−0.35	—	−0.14	—
Graduate	—	—	0.08	—	−0.01	—
GDS-SF score	−0.13	0.61	0.05	0.63	0.00	0.69
Comorbid medical conditions	−0.26	0.27	−0.05	0.65	0.01	0.26
BTACT composite score	N/A	N/A	−0.17	0.09	0.03	0.23
Animal Naming score	0.45	<0.001	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
Hearing status	−2.00	0.06	−0.39	<0.001	−0.01	0.76
Vision status	−0.65	0.55	−0.03	0.71	0.09	0.04

Note. In the model that predicted SWB “happy” task score, Animal Naming score was included to control for intrinsic semantic fluency ability; in the model that predicted the proportion of responses (not total number of responses), we adjusted instead for global cognitive BTACT score. GDS-SF, geriatric depression scale short-form; BTACT, Brief Test of Adult Cognition by Telephone. ^aTotal number of responses to the 60-second “name things that make people happy” task.