BMC Psychol. 2026 Feb 7. doi: 10.1186/s40359-026-04066-8. Online ahead of print.
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: To investigate the longitudinal relationship between informal social participation and life satisfaction among older adults relocated for poverty alleviation in China, as well as the mediating role of perceived stress and sleep duration.
METHODS: Overall, 1345 participants [mean age 71.52 (SD:7.19) years; 48.4% female] were included in the longitudinal study. The participants were surveyed using perceived stress scale-14 (PSS-14) and satisfaction with life scale (SWLS). AMOS Statistics 26 was used to test for common method bias (CMB). SPSS Statistics 26 was used to conduct descriptive statistics, and correlation analysis. Besides, four longitudinal cross-lagged models and bootstrap methods were employed to investigate whether there is a mutual influence among informal social participation, perceived stress/sleep duration, and life satisfaction by AMOS Statistics 26.
RESULTS: This study did not have a severe problem of CMB. The results indicated informal social participation predicted perceived stress and sleep duration 6 months later; perceived stress predicted life satisfaction 6 months later; and informal social participation at T1 predicted life satisfaction at T3 through perceived stress at T2. However, informal social participation at T1 did not predict life satisfaction at T3 through sleep duration at T2.
DISCUSSION: These results indicate that for relocated older adults, informal social participation enhances life satisfaction not by improving sleep duration, but primarily through reducing perceived stress. The key pathway is that social participation lowers stress levels, which in turn leads to greater long-term life satisfaction. Hence, our findings could serve to prompt the administrators of community to be aware of the significance of stress alleviation and regard it as a key intervention target in programs designed to enhance the well-being of relocated older adults.
PMID:41654879 | DOI:10.1186/s40359-026-04066-8
