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. 2021 Jul 14;18(14):7502.
doi: 10.3390/ijerph18147502.

Community-Level Participation in Volunteer Groups and Individual Depressive Symptoms in Japanese Older People: A Three-Year Longitudinal Multilevel Analysis Using JAGES Data

Motoki Tamura  1   2 , Shinji Hattori  2   3 , Taishi Tsuji  3   4 , Katsunori Kondo  3   5 , Masamichi Hanazato  3 , Kanami Tsuno  1 , Hiroyuki Sakamaki  1
Affiliations

Community-Level Participation in Volunteer Groups and Individual Depressive Symptoms in Japanese Older People: A Three-Year Longitudinal Multilevel Analysis Using JAGES Data

Motoki Tamura et al. Int J Environ Res Public Health. .

Abstract

Background: The current study aimed to investigate the contextual effect of volunteer group participation on subsequent depressive symptoms in older people.

Methods: We analyzed the longitudinal data of 37,552 people aged 65 years and older in 24 municipalities surveyed in the Japan Gerontological Evaluation Study. Volunteer group participation of older people was assessed in 2013 by one question and depressive symptoms were assessed by the Geriatric Depression Scale 15 in 2016. To investigate a contextual effect, we aggregated individual-level volunteer group participation by each residence area as a community-level independent variable. We conducted a two-level multilevel Poisson regression analysis using the Random Intercepts and Fixed Slopes Model.

Results: The average proportion of community-level volunteer group participation was 10.6%. The results of the Poisson regression analysis showed that community-level volunteer group participation reduced the risk for the onset of depressive symptoms by 13% with a 10 percentage point increase in participation, after adjusting for sex, age, population density, total annual sunshine hours and annual rainfall (incident rate ratio, 0.87; 95% confidence interval, 0.78-0.98).

Conclusions: Older people living in areas with higher volunteer group participation had a lower risk of developing depressive symptoms regardless of whether or not they participated in a volunteer group.

Keywords: contextual effects; depression risk; social capital; social contagion.

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Conflict of interest statement

The funders had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript, or in the decision to publish the results. The co-author, Masamichi Hanazato, has received grant support from the Takenaka Corporation, AEON MALL, Inc. and AEON TOWN Co. In addition, the same author has received support from the Takenaka Corporation in the form of scholarship (incentive) donations and endowed courses provided by the company. None of the authors have any other conflict of interest to disclose.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Flow of participants in the cohort study.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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