Abstract
This study (1) examined the effects of religiousness/spirituality and social networks as predictors of depressive symptoms in older Korean Americans and (2) compared the best predictors of depressive symptoms. A cross-sectional survey was conducted with 200 older Korean Americans residing in the New York City area in 2009. Best-subsets regression analyses were used to evaluate the best predictors of depressive symptoms. Nearly 30% of older Korean participants reported mild or severe depressive symptoms. The best model fit for depressive symptoms involved four predictors: physical health status, religious/spiritual coping skills, social networks, and annual household income. Social networks and religious/spiritual coping skills contributed significantly to the variance of depressive symptoms. Adding additional variables to the model did not enhance predictive and descriptive power. Religiousness/spirituality and social networks are important for coping with life stress and may be useful in developing effective health care strategies in the management of depression among older Korean Americans. Health education and intervention could be framed in ways that strengthen such coping resources for this population. Future research is needed to best guide prevention and intervention strategies.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by a grant received by Dr. Roh from the John A. Hartford Foundation for the Dissertation Research. A subset of her dissertation data was utilized for this present study. The authors are grateful to the Korean older adults who participated in the survey and acknowledge Dr. Yuri Jang for her invaluable comments and feedback on the manuscript.
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Lee, YS., Park, SY., Roh, S. et al. The Role of Religiousness/Spirituality and Social Networks in Predicting Depressive Symptoms among Older Korean Americans. J Cross Cult Gerontol 32, 239–254 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10823-017-9317-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10823-017-9317-5