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. 2025 Jun 16:31:101828.
doi: 10.1016/j.ssmph.2025.101828. eCollection 2025 Sep.

Participation in community gathering place and social capital: A longitudinal study of older adults

Kazushige Ide  1   2 , Takayuki Ueno  1   2 , Taishi Tsuji  3 , Ryota Watanabe  1   4   5 , Masashige Saito  4   6 , Miyako Kimura  7 , Atsushi Nakagomi  1 , Katsunori Kondo  1   2   5
Affiliations

Participation in community gathering place and social capital: A longitudinal study of older adults

Kazushige Ide et al. SSM Popul Health. .

Abstract

Introduction: Social capital is a common target of intervention used by policymakers to address the health challenges of older adults. However, evidence for the effectiveness of social capital interventions remain still clearly lacking.

Methods: This study used a longitudinal study design. We used three waves of data (2016, 2017, and 2019) from 6025 older adults in Japan. We assessed ten social capital indicators in 2019 as outcomes. The exposure was participation in community gathering places in 2017. Pre-exposure characteristics and prior outcome levels in 2016 were adjusted. Linear regression analysis and modified Poisson regression analysis were employed according to the nature of the outcome.

Results: Community gathering places participation was positively associated with nine social capital indicators; frequency of meeting friends (B: 0.55), number of friends seen within a month (B: 0.49), number of community organizations (B: 0.28-0.55), norms of reciprocity (B: 0.18), and attachment (B: 0.15); all results showed p1.

Keywords: Healthy ageing; Social connectedness; Social network; Social participation; Social support.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Participant flow for analytic sample.
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Diagram illustrating the temporal order of data linkage and variables included in the analysis.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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