Successful Aging and Quality of Life in Older Adults
Summary
Successful ageing encompasses a dynamic interplay of physical health, cognitive function, psychological well-being and social engagement that contributes to enhanced quality of life in later years. Rather than mere absence of disease, it is viewed through a bio-psycho-social lens, integrating individual resilience, adaptive strategies and supportive environments. Quality of life in older adults reflects both objective measures, such as functional ability and health status, and subjective evaluations, including life satisfaction and perceived autonomy. Contemporary frameworks emphasise longitudinal trajectories across the life course, recognising that cumulative exposures, lifestyle behaviours and socio-economic circumstances shape outcomes. Advances in measurement have introduced composite indices and harmonised metrics to capture multidimensional aspects of ageing, enabling comparative analyses across populations. Practical applications range from tailoring public health interventions to informing age-friendly policies that promote continued participation, optimise mobility and support psychological resources such as self-efficacy and optimism.
Research from Nature Portfolio
Recent studies have leveraged sophisticated analytical tools to refine the assessment of healthier ageing trajectories and their determinants. A pioneering Bayesian multilevel Item Response Theory approach has yielded a harmonised health metric that is comparable across longitudinal cohorts, facilitating the identification of socio-demographic and lifestyle predictors of health status in thousands of older adults. This framework enables clinicians and researchers to monitor trends in functional ability and establish norms that can inform personalised care. Complementary work using latent class growth models has mapped distinct trajectories of functional and cognitive capacity in a national ageing cohort, revealing stable high-functioning groups as well as a declining subgroup. These trajectory classes are strongly influenced by modifiable behaviours such as physical activity and smoking cessation, underlining the impact of mid- and late-life lifestyle factors on the course of ageing.
Successful Aging and Quality of Life in Older Adults publication trend
The graph below shows the total number of articles in successful aging and quality of life in older adults across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).
Technical terms
Successful ageing: A multidimensional concept encompassing physical health, cognitive functioning, mental well-being and social engagement that leads to maintained autonomy and life satisfaction in later life.
Quality of life: A subjective assessment of well-being that includes satisfaction with physical health, psychological state, social relationships and environmental conditions.
Functional ability: The capacity to perform activities of daily living and instrumental tasks, reflecting mobility, strength, cognition and independence.
Item Response Theory: A statistical framework for creating harmonised scales by modelling relationships between underlying traits and observed item responses across different assessment waves or studies.
Latent trajectory: A modelled pattern of change in an unobserved attribute, such as health status, over time, identifying subgroups with similar progression profiles.
References
- 60 years of healthy aging: On definitions, biomarkers, scores and challenges. Ageing Research Reviews (2023).
- Concepts and definitions of healthy ageing: a systematic review and synthesis of theoretical models. EClinicalMedicine (2023).
- Advanced analytical methodologies for measuring healthy ageing and its determinants, using factor analysis and machine learning techniques: the ATHLOS project. Scientific Reports (2017).
- Healthy ageing trajectories and lifestyle behaviour: the Mexican Health and Aging Study. Scientific Reports (2019).
- Psychological approach to successful ageing predicts future quality of life in older adults. Health and Quality of Life Outcomes (2011).
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