IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/geronb/v77y2022i1p237-248..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Religious Involvement and Cognitive Functioning at the Intersection of Race–Ethnicity and Gender Among Midlife and Older Adults

Author

Listed:
  • Andrea K Henderson
  • Katrina M Walsemann
  • Jennifer A Ailshire
  • Deborah S Carr

Abstract

ObjectivesTo investigate the association between religious involvement and cognitive functioning at the intersections of race–ethnicity and gender among midlife and older adults, and to determine if psychosocial factors help explain this relationship.MethodThe sample included 14,037 adults aged 50+ from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS). We utilized measures from the HRS 2010 and 2012 Core interviews and Leave-Behind questionnaires and estimated our models using linear regression.ResultsCompared to individuals who frequently attended religious services, infrequent religious service attendance was related to poorer cognitive functioning. Religiosity was inversely associated with cognitive functioning at baseline, but the relationship varied by race/gender subgroup. Greater religiosity was associated with better cognitive functioning among Black women, but lower cognitive functioning among White men and women. Psychosocial factors did little to explain the inverse association between religiosity and cognitive functioning.DiscussionResults suggest the association between religious involvement and cognitive functioning is varied and complex, and largely dependent on important social identities. The findings have important implications for investigating health-protective factors, like religious involvement, using an intersectional perspective.

Suggested Citation

  • Andrea K Henderson & Katrina M Walsemann & Jennifer A Ailshire & Deborah S Carr, 2022. "Religious Involvement and Cognitive Functioning at the Intersection of Race–Ethnicity and Gender Among Midlife and Older Adults," The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, The Gerontological Society of America, vol. 77(1), pages 237-248.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:geronb:v:77:y:2022:i:1:p:237-248.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/geronb/gbab034
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:geronb:v:77:y:2022:i:1:p:237-248.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/psychsocgerontology .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.