Aging & Social Change: Ninth Interdisciplinary Conference

Abstract

Anticipation of the eventual loss of aging, yet healthy parents consists of feelings of gratitude, sadness, and worry. This type of loss is distinct from the anticipatory grief experienced when the death of a parent is approaching. The purpose of this study is to explore the conceptual definition of parent anticipatory loss, its measurement, and correlates with sociodemographic characteristics such as race and ethnicity. The Parent Anticipatory Loss Scale (PALS) contains items such as “I feel lucky that my parents are as healthy as they are”, rated on an 8- point Likert scale. Expert content validity was established with a six-member panel. After IRB approval, a sample (N= 315) of non-caregiving, mostly Caucasian (n = 182, 57.6%) men (n=202, 63.9%), average age of 36.4 (SD 10.2), was obtained through the crowdsourcing platform, Mechanical Turk. Items with an inter-item correlation < 0.3 and > 0.8 were eliminated resulting in a 19 item scale (α = 0.93). Anticipatory loss for the aging parent had small correlations with time spent with parent (r =0.27; p < .001), and emotional and functional supports provided (r = 0.22, p < .001) and received (r = 0.2, p < .001). Inter-item correlations, group difference testing multiple regression were all non-significant for age, income, education level and racial identity, suggesting that anticipatory loss may transcend national identities. Future research is recommended to replicate these findings and explore relationships between anticipatory loss and health outcomes such as caregiving preparedness, health disparities, and quality of life in aging families.