A Comparative Analysis of Measurement Approaches for Physiological Dysregulation in an Older Population

A growing body of evidence suggests that the cumulative experience of emotional challenges and stressful events over the lifecourse may take a significant physiological toll, referred to as allostatic load, on multiple interrelated systems of the body. Multiple summary measures of these effects have been proposed in the literature, but there is no systematic evaluation of alternative measurements. We use data from a population-based sample of older Taiwanese to compare the explanatory power and predictive performance of several measures of allostatic load for diverse health outcomes. We find that, although modest, the various assumptions made when constructing measures of allostatic load do have effects that should be considered carefully. Our findings suggest development of measures that preserve the continuous properties of the component biological measurements and underscore the importance of nonlinear effects suggested in previous research. These fundamental insights are of use to applied researchers in the field currently in search of useful empirical formulations of allostatic load and to those who are focused on the development of improved measurement strategies.