Code for Exploring the Bidirectional Influence Between Awareness of Age-Related Change and Health Outcomes in the Second Half of Life, 2019-2022

The meta-data comprise five STATA do-file with the syntax used for the analyses for five publications.
The proportion of older people is rapidly increasing and with that also the number of people in poor health. Finding ways to promote active and health aging is therefore highly important. This project aims to provide evidence on people's perceptions of their own aging to understand whether positive self-perceptions of aging act as a motivating factor that leads to greater engagement in social and physical activities, as well as in better maintenance of mental, physical, and cognitive health. This project specifically focuses on the bidirectional influences between self-perceptions and health as few studies so far investigated the bidirectionally of these two factors. Providing evidence in support of the causal pathway from self-perceptions to activity engagement and health is highly important to provide evidence that targeting self-perceptions could potentially lead to better health in middle and older age.
This project comprises five studies/aims investigating:
(1) the role of awareness of age-related changes as predictors of cognitive trajectories over two years. (2) the bidirectional associations between awareness of age-related changes and indicators of physical, mental, and cognitive health and functioning in middle and older age. (3) the cross-sectional associations between awareness of age-related changes and number and type of mental and physical health conditions. (4) the role of awareness of age-related change in the longitudinal association of pain with physical activity engagement. (5) the bidirectional association between awareness of age-related change and use of social media.