PRIMARY AND SECONDARY CONTROL STRATEGIES: IMPLICATIONS FOR HEALTH AND WELL-BEING AMONG OLDER ADULTS

As people move into advanced old age, they face increasing levels of age-related activity restriction. It becomes important that older adults adjust their goal-striving to age-related control restrictions in order to optimize physical and psychological well-being in this advanced and final stage of life. Older adults may use a variety of different control strategies to adjust to age-related activity restriction, initially in attempts to accomplish tasks, and then to ameliorate the negative psychological consequences of being unable to do so. In this study, cluster analysis revealed four unique patterns of primary and secondary control strategy use among 190 very old (79-98 years) community-dwelling adults. The majority of individuals were classified in a Primary Control Croup (42.1%) characterized by continued task persistence. Second, a Multi-Strategy Croup (16.3%) endorsed a combination of modified primary control strategies and compensatory secondary strategies. Third, a Relinquished Control Group (22.1%) was characterized by the abandonment of primary strategies and only modest use of supplemental compensatory secondary strategies. Finally, a Failure to Compensate Croup (19.5%) endorsed modified primary control strategies (i.e., task modification), but showed a marked de-emphasis of compensatory secondary strategies. We assessed each group's self-report control opportunities, as well as their physical and psychological well-being. individuals in the Primary Control and Multi-Strategy groups reported better physical and psychological well-being relative to the Relinquished Control and Failure to Compensate groups, presumably because they achieved a better match between control strategies and objective control opportunities.