Predicting a Partner's End‐of‐Life Preferences,or Substituting One's Own?

Numerous studies comparing patients' end‐of‐life health care treatment preferences with their surrogates' reports of those preferences indicate that partners do not know one another's treatment preferences: Random guesses are just as likely as surrogate choices to match the patients' preferences. The present study uses the empathic accuracy model and the assumed similarity model to shed further light on accuracy and bias in surrogate reports. The data come from the National Center for Family and Marriage Research/Knowledge Networks Pilot Study 2010, a national sample of 1,075 heterosexual American couples age 18 to 64. Surrogate reports were simultaneously biased (i.e., correlated with the surrogate's own preference) and accurate (i.e., correlated with the partner's actual preference). Higher relationship quality and legal marriage (vs. cohabitation) were associated with increased assumed similarity bias. These findings suggest that practitioners working in end‐of‐life care need to be familiar with their partnered patients' relationship dynamics.     

The Influence of Sociodemographic and Psychosocial Factors on Advance Care Planning

This study investigated sociodemographic and psychosocial factors that enhance or impede the completion of advance care planning, analyzing data from the Health and Retirement Study. The analytic subsample included the panel participants who died between 2006 and 2010 and who had answered the psychosocial and lifestyle questionnaire when they were alive. Multinomial logistic regression was executed to answer the research question (N = 1,056). The study found that persons who were older, who were women, who identified themselves as White, and who had higher levels of income and education were more likely to be motivated to complete advance care planning. Having greater sense of control was found to weaken the adverse relationship between being African American and the completion of advance directives. Having cancer, suffering from the illnesses for longer periods of time, and having experience of nursing home institutionalization also predicted the completion of advance care planning. Implications include incorporating a culturally tailored approach for racial/ethnic minorities and using advance directives that are clear and easily understood. In addition, future research needs to include a larger minority population and examine the extent to which variations between racial/ethnic groups exist in relation to advance care planning.     

Intergenerational interaction between old and young in creative task

By comparing intergenerational to same-generation interactions in creative activities, we aimed to reveal characteristic behaviors of older and younger adults in intergenerational interactions using a wooden block task. Four categories (“Proposal request”, “New proposal”, “Reactions to proposal”, “Assessments of partner’s behavior”) were extracted from conversations during task performance. In intergenerational groups, the ratio of utterances of “Proposal request” (encouraging a new proposal to partner) were higher than in same-generation groups for older adults. In intergenerational groups, older people assumed the role of encouraging younger people to suggest new ideas, and older people’s such empathic behaviors might provoke lively arguments.     

Age at Adoption: Long-Term Measures of Success in Adulthood

Older child adoptions are increasing, yet little attention has been paid to the effect of age at adoption in adoptees’ later years. This study examines a relationship between age at adoption and later educational levels as well as socioeconomic status and psychological well-being. The results suggest that adoptees are similar in all assessed areas by their mid 30s, with the exception of educational attainment, regardless of the age at which they were adopted. Findings draw attention to the need for educational support for late-placed adoptees.