KLoSA longitudinal (w1 ~ w8) depressive symptoms and satisfaction scales

Depressive symptoms dynamically fluctuate with time rather than remain stable. Few studies examined how longitudinally assessed the within-person effect of depressive symptoms correspond with changes in subjective perceptions of health, economic status, and social relationships. This study focused on adults from midlife to older age in the Korean Longitudinal Study of Aging (KLoSA). The survey assessed depressive symptoms and domains of satisfaction throughout eight waves of repeated follow-ups every 2 years. The analysis examined the associations of life satisfaction domains with between-person (cross-sectional) and within-person (longitudinal) effects. We found that the extent of correlation strength was generally lower in the within-person than between-person associations. The health and economic status satisfactions showed a relatively higher within-person correlation, indicating that the measures correspondingly fluctuated with depressive symptoms across time. On the contrary, satisfaction in spousal and children relationships showed minimalized correlations compared to between-person correlation. Our findings suggest that between-person individual differences during later life are more characterized by compounded sources of variation, including pre-existing vulnerabilities. Moreover, specific domains of life satisfaction are more reflective of within-person effects. D3 – Depressed mood D4 – Effortful D5 – Doing well D7 – Sleep difficulty D8 – Without much complaint D9 – Feeling lonely D10 – Cannot get going sat1 - health satisfaction sat2 - economic satisfaction sat3 - spousal satisfaction sat4 - children satisfaction sat5 - overall satisfaction