The Psychological Well‐being of Older Adults With and Without Cognitive Impairment During the COVID‐19 Pandemic
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Background During the COVID‐19 pandemic, older adults were considered vulnerable to declines in well‐being, especially those with preexisting cognitive impairments. However, qualitative studies have focused on the resilience of cognitively‐unimpaired older adults during the pandemic. Therefore, the present study employed both quantitative and qualitative measures of well‐being to elucidate the pandemic experiences of Canadian community‐dwelling older adults with a range of cognitive profiles, including those with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and dementia. Method Participants were drawn from the Comprehensive Assessment of Neurodegeneration and Dementia (COMPASS‐ND) Study, including the following cognitive profiles: Cognitively unimpaired (CU; n = 59, n female =45, M age =72), Subjective Cognitive Decline (SCD; n = 26, n female =20, M age =72), Parkinson's Disease (PD; n = 45, n female =19, M age =70), Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI; n = 143, n female =44, M age =75), and Alzheimer's Disease (AD; n = 62, n female =21, M age =75). During the pandemic, participants completed a questionnaire on COVID‐19 experiences, which included the Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS, max. score=30) and the seven‐item Generalized Anxiety Disorder Scale (GAD‐7; max. score=21). Also, a COVID‐19‐specific version of the Impact of Events Scale ‐ Revised (IES‐R; max score=84) assessed behaviours associated with stress and trauma. Result In the preliminary quantitative analysis, GDS scores (M=7.3, SD=5.9) were higher for females than males (M female‐male =1.6, F=3.911, p = 0.049, η 2 = 0.011), and the diagnostic groups also differed (F=6.038, p <0.001, η 2 = 0.068): CU adults (M=4.5, SD=4.5) had lower scores than participants with MCI (M=7.5, SD=5.8), AD (M=8.3, SD=5.9), and PD (M=8.8, SD=7.2), but not SCD (M=7.2, SD=5.7). On the GAD‐7 (M=2.6, SD=3.6) the scores of female participants were higher than those of male participants (M female‐male =1.1, F=4.123, p = 0.043, η 2 = 0.012), but diagnostic groups did not significantly differ (M diff ≤1.8, F=1.424, p = 0.226, η 2 = 0.017). On the COVID‐19‐specific IES‐R (M=10.8, SD=9.9), the main effects of diagnostic group (M diff ≤3.4, F=1.374, p = 0.243, η 2 = 0.017) and sex (M female‐male =1.7, F=1.440, p = 0.231, η 2 = 0.004) did not yield statistically significant results. Conclusion Contrary to prior reports, mean scores on measures of psychological well‐being suggested that this sample of older adults experienced relatively low levels of pandemic‐related distress, regardless of differences in cognitive functioning. Future analyses will further clarify these findings in light of participants' qualitative data, physical activity, and level of social support during the pandemic.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".