Activity Diversity and Well-Being in Daily Life: Evidence for Heterogeneity Between Older Adults.

OBJECTIVES: Although higher activity diversity is associated with higher well-being at the between-person level, it is unknown whether a day with higher activity diversity is related to higher well-being within persons. Within 24 hr per day, there are a limited number of activities on which individuals could spend their time and energy. Personal resources could influence the expenditure of energy and thus the experience with daily activities. This study examined daily associations between activity diversity and well-being and whether age and self-related health moderated the associations. METHODS: For seven times per day over 2 weeks, 129 retired older adults (Mage = 73.9 years, SDage = 5.6) reported their present activity engagement and positive and negative affect. Daily activity diversity was operationalized as the number of different activity types reported per day. Daily positive and negative affect were assessed as the average of a range of high- and low-arousal affective states. Self-rated health was assessed with an item from the 12-Item Short-Form Health Survey at baseline. RESULTS: Multilevel models showed that daily activity diversity was unrelated, on average, to daily positive or negative affect at the between- and within-person levels. Daily activity diversity was associated with lower daily positive affect in participants with lower self-rated health, but the Johnson-Neyman regions of significance were outside of the range of observed data. DISCUSSION: Divergent patterns were observed in the within-person associations between activity diversity and well-being across participants. Results are discussed in the context of time use and well-being in older age.

Daily activity diversity and daily working memory in community-dwelling older adults.

OBJECTIVE: Cross-sectional and long-term longitudinal studies have shown that engagement in diverse activities benefits cognitive performance in older age, but it is unknown whether the beneficial effect holds within persons on a daily basis. This study examines the within-person association between activity diversity and working memory on the same day and its time-lagged directionality between days. It also examines the effects of potential moderators on the within-person association, including age, education, processing speed, and crystallized intelligence, to understand who may benefit more from daily activity diversity. METHOD: We examined smartphone-based ambulatory assessment data from 150 community-dwelling older adults (aged 65-91 years) from Switzerland. Participants reported their present activity and completed a working memory task (i.e., numerical updating) seven times per day over 15 days. Activity diversity was calculated on a daily level and scores of working memory were averaged within a day. Age, education, processing speed, and crystallized intelligence were assessed in the laboratory at baseline. RESULTS: Multilevel models showed that, within persons, higher daily activity diversity was positively associated with higher daily working memory. Moreover, the prior day's greater activity diversity led to that day's higher working memory, but not vice versa. There were no moderating effects of age, education, and crystallized intelligence, but partial evidence of a moderating effect of processing speed. CONCLUSIONS: Our results on within-person concurrent and time-lagged associations between daily activity diversity and daily working memory strengthen the existing evidence on the beneficial effect of activity diversity on older adults' cognitive performance. Results are discussed in the context of cognitive reserve theory. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).