Racial and Ethnic Differences in Activities of Daily Living Disability Among the Elderly: The Case of Spanish Speakers

Manasi A. Tirodkar*, Jing Song, Rowland W. Chang, Dorothy D. Dunlop, Huan J. Chang

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

21 Scopus citations

Abstract

Tirodkar MA, Song J, Chang RW, Dunlop DD, Chang HJ. Racial and ethnic differences in activities of daily living disability among the elderly: the case of Spanish speakers. Objective: To compare incident disability patterns across racial and ethnic groups. Design: Prospective cohort study with 6-year follow-up (1998-2004). Setting: National probability sample. Participants: A 1998 Health and Retirement Study sample of 12,288 non-Hispanic whites, 1952 African Americans, 575 Hispanics interviewed in Spanish (Hispanic-Spanish), and 518 Hispanics interviewed in English (Hispanic-English), older than 51 years, and free of disability at baseline. Interventions: Not applicable. Main Outcome Measure: Disability in activities of daily living (ADL) tasks (walking, dressing, transferring, bathing, toileting, feeding). Results: Hispanic-Spanish reported disproportionately lower rates of walking disability (standardized rates, 4.31% vs Hispanic-English [8.57%], black [7.54%], white [7.20%]) despite higher reported Hispanic-Spanish frequencies of lower-extremity dysfunction than other racial and ethnic groups. Across the 6 ADL tasks, the development of walking disability was most frequent among Hispanic-English subjects, African Americans, and whites. In contrast, Hispanic-Spanish subjects reported dressing as the most frequent ADL task disability, whereas walking ranked fourth. Conclusions: Aggregating all Hispanics, regardless of interview language, may be inappropriate. Future research on linguistic group differences in self-reported health outcomes is necessary to ensure that health status measures will be appropriate for use in diverse racial and ethnic groups.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)1262-1266
Number of pages5
JournalArchives of physical medicine and rehabilitation
Volume89
Issue number7
DOIs
StatePublished - Jul 2008

Funding

This study used public data from the HRS, which is sponsored by the National Institute of Aging and conducted by the Institute of Social Research, University of Michigan.

Keywords

  • Activities of daily living
  • Hispanic Americans
  • Rehabilitation

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Rehabilitation
  • Physical Therapy, Sports Therapy and Rehabilitation

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