Marjolein I Broese van Groenou

Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam | VU · Department of Sociology

As health impairment increases, older adults utilize care from different types of caregivers, but little is known about changes in the composition of care networks. We mapped the transitions between different care networks to gain insight into which people develop care networks that include informal, privately and publicly paid care. We used three...

Objectives: Older care recipients have different types of care networks, varying from spouse-only to large mixed care networks, that add to different levels of wellbeing. Applying Self-Determination Theory (SDT) to the care context, we argue that the care network composition may foster or hamper the three basic needs for wellbeing: relatedness, au...

Objectives: This study aims to provide insight into (i) how the combination of paid work and family care is longitudinally associated with gender-related differences in depressive symptoms and (ii) the role of work characteristics in this association. Methods: Data were derived from STREAM, a Dutch prospective cohort study of older workers aged...

Background Due to societal changes and changes in the availability of health promoting factors, explanatory factors of socioeconomic inequalities in health (SIH) may change with time. We investigate differences in the relative importance of behavioural, social and psychological factors for explaining inequalities in physical performance between thr...

Background: Monitoring of trends in functioning of older adults provides indispensable information for health care policy. This study examined trends in multiple indicators of functioning among Dutch older adults across a period of 20 years. Methods: Data from the Longitudinal Aging Study Amsterdam were used. We included 10 870 observations of 3...

In recent decades, care policy in the Netherlands reduced budgets for residential care and formal home care, which increased the demand for informal care. Women use formal care more often than men, but we lack information on the extent to which the gender gap in care use is explained by differences in individual chracteristics and changes in care p...

Background Home-based care networks differ in size and composition, but little is known about the characteristics of care networks for those nearing the end of their lives. This study aimed to identify different types of home-based care networks of community-dwelling older adults in the Netherlands and to assess the association between care network...

Living apart together (LAT) combines intimacy with autonomy and flexibility but, possibly, with lower commitment to exchanging support and care compared with first marriages, remarriages, and cohabitation of older adults. Data from 50- to 79-year-old respondents in the Family and Fertility Survey 2013 (Statistics Netherlands; N = 4,108) showed that...

Background: Palliative care for older people with life-limiting diseases often involves informal caregivers, but the palliative care literature seldom focuses on the negative and positive aspects of informal caregiving. Objective: To assess the association of proximity to end of life (EOL) and dementia caregiving with informal caregivers' burden...

Background: Collaboration among informal and formal caregivers in a mixed care network of home-dwelling elderly may benefit from using a groupware app for digital networked communication (DNC).

Background and objectives: The general view is that partner-caregiver burden increases over time but findings are inconsistent. Moreover, the pathways underlying caregiver burden may differ between men and women. This study examines to what degree and why partner-caregiver burden changes over time. It adopts Pearlin's Caregiver Stress Process Mode...

De meeste mensen willen tot het eind van hun leven thuis blijven. Om dat mogelijk te maken, is mantelzorg cruciaal. Maar welke mantelzorgers en andere zorgverleners zijn er eigenlijk betrokken bij de zorg voor thuiswonende ouderen in het laatste levensjaar? En hoe kunnen mantelzorgers ondersteund worden?

Observation of long-term trends within countries is needed to increase insight into how policy initiatives are reflected in the use of care over time in addition to individual determinants of care use. In the past decades, Dutch care policies have favoured homecare and reduced the availability of institutional care which extended the care responsib...

BACKGROUND Collaboration among informal and formal caregivers in a mixed care network of home-dwelling elderly may benefit from using a groupware app for digital networked communication (DNC). OBJECTIVE This study aimed to describe and explain differences in the use and evaluation of a DNC app by members of the care network and to come up with a l...

Recent societal changes have increased the salience of non-kin relationships. It can be questioned whether network types that are more strongly non-kin-based give more informal care nowadays. We study how informal care use differs according to network type for three birth cohorts. Data from the Longitudinal Aging Study Amsterdam (LASA) on older adu...

The present study develops our understanding of the micro-level dynamics of decoupling by addressing how and why various occupational groups, that is, managers and professionals, are involved in decoupling in response to institutional complexity. Our conceptualization of occupational groups’ involvement in decoupling emerges from an in-depth qualit...

Objectives: We examine gender differences in the experienced burden of partner caregivers using the stress-appraisal model. Gender differences can be explained by differences in conditions of burden (primary stressors, help from others, hours of caregiving, and secondary stressors) and how strong their effects are. Method: The data are from the...

Sinds de hervorming van de langdurige zorg in 2015 is de vraag of kwetsbare burgers de zorg krijgen die ze nodig hebben. Mensen die hulp nodig hebben doen in toenemende mate een beroep op hun directe sociale omgeving. Dat beroep op de informele zorg vraagt veel veerkracht en organisatievermogen van families, maar ook van vrijwilligers, professional...

When are donations to non-profit organizations responsive to changes in government funding? This article examines relations between government financial support and charitable donations in an innovative mixed-methods design. A unique data set is obtained, matching individual-level survey data from the Giving in the Netherlands Panel Survey with med...

The ageing of society is leading to significant reforms in long-term care policy and systems in many European countries. The cutbacks in professional care are increasing demand for informal care considerably, from both kin and non-kin. At the same time, demographic and societal developments such as changing family structures and later retirement ma...

The Longitudinal Aging Study Amsterdam (LASA) is an ongoing longitudinal study of older adults in the Netherlands, which started in 1992. LASA is focused on the determinants, trajectories and consequences of physical, cognitive, emotional and social functioning. The study is based on a nationally representative sample of older adults aged 55 years...

Objectives: Policy reforms in long-term care require an increased share of informal caregivers in elderly care. This may be more feasible for older adults who (believe they) can organize the care themselves and have a local social network. This study describes care network types, how they vary in the share of informal caregivers, and examines asso...

Evaluatie van de implementatie van een digitale tool in de thuiszorg om de communicatie met mantelzorg te verbeteren DIGITALE COMMUNICATIE IN ZORGNETWERKEN VAN KWETSBARE OUDEREN

Work and informal care: a risk for mental health? Work and informal care: a risk for mental health? This study aims to increase insight in how providing informal care is associated with mental health among employees. The focus is on to what degree the provision of informal care, directly or in interaction with work and organizational characteristic...

Purpose: In response to the increased emphasis placed on older people's self-reliance in many welfare societies, we aimed to develop and validate a measurement instrument, assessing perceived control in health care among older adults with care needs. The target group consists of older people who live (semi-)independently and use professional healt...

This study investigates trends in, and the interdependence of, the use of informal and formal home care of community-dwelling older people over the last two decades in the context of governmental reform of long-term care services and modernisation of informal relationships. Seven observations of the Longitudinal Aging Study Amsterdam covering the t...

In ageing societies, policy makers aim for more contact between informal and formal care-givers as it may enhance the quality of care. So far, the linkage between formal and informal care-givers is generally studied from a one-sided or a single dyadic perspective, without taking into account that care networks of community-dwelling older adults oft...

This study explores the link between management characteristics of home care agencies and the involvement of informal caregiver in caregiving. Based on a study of policy documents of two agencies and semi-structured interviews with five team managers and 31 formal caregivers, we conclude that, although the importance of involving informal caregiver...

As part of long-term care reforms, home-care organisations in the Netherlands are required to strengthen the linkage between formal and informal caregivers of home-dwelling older adults. Information on the variety in mixed care networks may help home-care organisations to develop network type-dependent strategies to connect with informal caregivers...

Despite an increasing focus on micro-level responses to institutional complexity, knowledge about how different institutional logics are enacted in day-to-day practices is limited, as is our understanding of how differences between responses are resolved. We aim to advance our understanding by studying how members of hierarchically related occupati...

Background In the near future older adults are more needed in societal participation such as paid work, voluntary work and informal care. Being healthy makes it easier for older adults to participate in these types of participation. Demographic factors such as sex, age and socioeconomic status influence societal participation as well. It is yet u...

Population ageing and rising costs of long-term care mean that organisations will be confronted in the future with a growing number of employees who combine paid work with providing informal care to a relative or non-kin. Combining work and informal care successfully partly depends on job and care-related features, but more information is needed on...

Purpose The aim of this study was to examine the longitudinal association between educational level and frailty prevalence in older adults, and to investigate the role of material, biomedical, behavioral, social and mental factors in explaining this association. Methods Data over a period of 13 years were used from the Longitudinal Aging Study Ams...

DISCUSSION BETWEEN INFORMAL AND FORMAL CAREGIVERS OF COMMUNITY-DWELLING OLDER ADULTS: Current Dutch policy on long-term care is aimed at a stronger connection between formal home care and informal care. We examined if formal and informal caregivers of community-dwelling older adults discuss the care and whether this is related to characteristics of...

Er is nog weinig bekend over de samenwerking tussen de verschillende formele en informele hulpverleners die zorg geven aan thuiswonende ouderen. In een eerdere rapportage van het NPO- onderzoek ‘Zorgnetwerken van Kwetsbare Ouderen’ staat dat er gemiddeld bijna tien verschillende hulpverleners zorg verlenen aan kwetsbare thuiswonende ouderen: zeven...

This study examines the degree to which the sharing of parental care, as indicated by the amount of children participating in caregiving and by equality in caregiving intensity, is associated with similarities among sibling characteristics. A selected sample of 186 parents with at least two children was asked to report on the assistance provided by...

Based on the caregiver stress model, we examined how care demands, caregiver motivation, coping style and external support are associated with positive evaluation and caregiver burden among spousal, adult child and other types of care relations. Data from a sample of Dutch informal caregivers of 1,685 older persons (55 and older) were analyzed empl...

We explored whether a mechanistic or organic structure of home care organizations and their view on informal caregivers are reflected in, respectively, the composition and functioning of mixed care networks of community-dwelling older adults. Two home care organizations were selected: one with a more mechanistic structure, and one with an organic o...

The Dutch government plans to reform long-term care and support in the coming years. It is still unclear what impact these changes will have on frail older persons in need of care. They often receive different services and provisions as they grow older. What trajectories do they follow through the broad landscape of medical care, informal care, soc...

Older couples are likely to be confronted with health problems of both spouses and these health problems may negatively influence their marital satisfaction. The present study examined these possible negative effects using a dyadic perspective. Data from 78 independently living older couples were analyzed using the Actor-Partner Interdependence Mod...

Older adults in need of long-term care often receive help from both informal and formal caregivers. The division of tasks between these different types of caregivers may vary among such mixed care networks. Traditional models of task division suggest that formal and informal caregivers may either supplement each other or specialise in the care acti...

Objectives: Research on age-related changes in personal networks has found compelling evidence for socioemotional selectivity theory and exchange theory holding that older adults experience a decline in less emotionally close nonkin relations as they age. However, recent societal developments are likely to have increased the salience of nonkin rel...

Objective: The aim of this study is to increase our understanding of declining network size with aging by differentiating between processes of loss and gain and studying the associations with various health problems. Methods: Six observations of the Longitudinal Aging Study Amsterdam (LASA) across a time period of 16 years are used to study deta...

An 8-item scale has been developed to measure positive experiences by informal caregivers, the Positive Experiences Scale (PES). The PES is a unidimensional hierarchical Mokkenscale which varies from intrinsic satisfaction and relational enhancement to improvement of competence and social enhancement. The scale has a satisfactory Loevinger's H-valu...

An 8-item scale has been developed to measure positive experiences by informal caregivers, the Positive Experiences Scale (PES). The PES is a unidimensional hierarchical Mokkenscale which varies from intrinsic satisfaction and relational enhancement to improvement of competence and social enhancement. The scale has a satisfactory Loevinger’s H-valu...

Background Society is facing a growing number of older people. With the increase of older people an increase in number of frail persons is expected. But will the increase in number of frail persons parallel the increase of the number of older adults? Or are the features of older adults changing in time and are these changes reducing or amplifying t...

Cross-national comparisons employed welfare state classifications to explain differences in care use in the European older population. Yet these classifications do not cover all care-related societal characteristics and limit our understanding of which specific societal characteristics are most important. Using the Survey of Health, Ageing and Reti...

Volunteering in later life attracts attention because its benefits older volunteers, voluntary associations, and society. Unfortunately, researchers and practitioners struggle with the complexity of predicting who volunteers. The authors ask whether a rough identification of older volunteers solely based on age is possible. The authors answer this...

Het verrichten van mantelzorg kan leiden tot een (te) hoge belasting. In dit artikel gaan we na in hoeverre de mate van belasting van werkende mantelzorgers samenhangt met kenmerken van hun werk (zoals de omvang van de arbeidsduur en de sector) en in hoeverre strategieën voor het combineren van betaald werk met mantelzorg die belasting (lijken te)...

Previous research on the care-giver burden experienced by adult children has typically focused on the adult child and parent dyad. This study uses information on multiple informal care-givers and examines how characteristics of the informal care-giving network affect the adult child's care-giver burden. In 2007, 602 Dutch care-givers who were assis...

Over the past years, older persons' workforce participation has increased and, after years of studying early retirement, the focus has gradually shifted to workforce participation between age 60 and 70 years. Those are the years directly below and above the mandatory retirement age in most of the European countries. We investigate the influence of...

This study examines the degree to which siblings' behaviors and characteristics influence a child's caregiving. A sample of 186 older parents in need of care with at least two adult children reported on characteristics and caregiving of all their children (N = 703). Multilevel regression models show that there is evidence of children's joint caregi...

Deze studie vergelijkt mantelzorg in een tehuis met mantelzorg in de thuissituatie. Met behulp van gegevens van de nationale studie ?Informele Hulp 2007? (CBS/SCP), vergelijken we kenmerken van zorgverlening, mantelzorgers, belasting, ondersteuning en afstemming met professionele hulpverleners tussen 219 mantelzorgers van bewoners van een tehuis (i...

The study compares the formal and informal social participation of 60–69 year olds in The Netherlands in 1992 and 2002, and examines which attributes of the two cohorts favour social participation. Using data from the Longitudinal Aging Study Amsterdam, it was found that cohort differences in formal participation (as members of organisations, in vo...

Given population aging and the productive potential of older people, it is important to examine how individual and societal developments affect social engagement in later life. The study aimed to disentangle the effects of age, aging, and cohort on volunteering among the young old. Using data from the Longitudinal Aging Study Amsterdam, we examined...

The positive trend in volunteering among the Dutch young old may in part be due to a relatively favorable disposition to volunteer. Using data from the Longitudinal Aging Study Amsterdam, volunteering rates of 55-64 year olds in 1992 and 2002 were compared and associated with (among others) three types of dispositional factors: religious involvemen...

It is well-known that the use of care services is most intensive in the last phase of life. However, so far only a few determinants of end-of-life care utilization are known. The aims of this study were to describe the utilization of acute and long-term care among older adults in their last year of life as compared to those not in their last year o...

Many current discussions of welfare state reforms focus on the , a group now generally perceived as healthy people past retirement age without a legal responsibility for dependent persons in need of care. For the welfare state, they constitute a resource whose activities are hard to steer. This article focuses on the influence of the welfare state...

We examine the extent of emotional and social loneliness among older people and how the evaluation of the functioning and quality of marriages plays a role. Data on 755 respondents aged 64-92 are taken from the Longitudinal Aging Study Amsterdam (Wave 2001-2002). Hierarchical negative binomial regression analysis is used. Between 1 in 4 and 5 older...

This study examines the effects of own and spousal disability on social and emotional loneliness among married adults aged 65 and older. Data from 710 men and 379 women of a Dutch community sample were analyzed with linear regression analyses. For men, only their wives' disability was related to higher levels of social loneliness, whereas for women...

This study compares educational differences in the functional limitations of 55-65-year-olds in the Netherlands in 1992 and 2002 and examines whether changes are explained by cohort lifestyle and psychosocial changes. Data from two cohorts of 55-65-year-olds (n = 948 in 1992 and n = 980 in 2002) in the Longitudinal Aging Study Amsterdam are analyse...

The convoy model conceptualizes older adults' networks of personal relationships as convoys of social support.This prospective study examined how contact and support in several relationships changed due to widowhood. Usingobservations between 1992 and 2002 from the Longitudinal Aging Study Amsterdam, multilevel models describechange in contact and...

The use of care by older adults after hospital discharge: Developments between 1992-2002 Changes between 1992 and 2002 in the use of care by older adults after hospital discharge are examined. Data were used from four waves of the population-based Longitudinal Aging Study Amsterdam, including persons aged 64-85 years at each wave. Admission to hosp...

This study explains changes in contact frequency in relationships of the preseparation personal network in the early and later years after partners separate. The explanation includes general and separation-related characteristics of the network relationship and the individual. Personal interviews were conducted in three waves of a 12-year longitudi...

Ouderen met kleine netwerken van persoonlijke relaties waarin weinig familieleden en buurtgenoten zijn opgenomen, hebben een verhoogd risico voor sociale isolatie en psychische gezondheidsproblemen. Vooral 75-plussers, alleenstaande mannen, ouderen met een laag-economische status, die wonen in een grote stad behoren met name tot deze risicogroep. O...

Nowadays people speak of the 'new' generation of young old who would be healthier and more socially active compared to the earlier generation. Using data from the Longitudinal Aging Study Amsterdam it was examined to what degree this is a realistic image. The study compared the social participation level of 55-64 year olds in 1992 and the same age...

Nowadays people speak of the ‘new’ generation of young old who would be healthier and more socially active compared to the earlier generation. Using data from the Longitudinal Aging Study Amsterdam it was examined to what degree this is a realistic image. The study compared the social participation level of 55-64 year olds in 1992 and the same age...

Following the press-competence model (PCM) of Lawton and associates, we tested two expectations as to the adaptations older adults make to their socio-physical environment following health decline: (1) depending on the change in their functional limitations, older adults use adaptive strategies ranging from mobilizing informal care to moving into a...

Gerotranscendence defines a shift in meta-perspective from earlier materialistic and pragmatic concerns, toward more cosmic and transcendent ones in later life. Population-based studies that have empirically examined this concept using Tornstam’s gerotranscendence scale, highlight cosmic transcendence as a core component, which includes a sense of...

This study examines the association between socioeconomic status and changes in physical function in younger- (aged 55-70 years) and older-old (aged 70-85 years) adults and seeks to determine the relative contribution of diseases, behavioral, and psychosocial factors in explaining this association. Data were from 2,366 men and women, aged 55-85 yea...

Many older people die in hospitals, whereas research indicates that they would prefer to die at home. Little is known about the factors associated with place of death. The aim of the present study was to investigate the care received by older people in the last 3 months of their life, the transitions in care and the predictors of place of death. In...

Disagreement exists about the relationship between divorce and social integration. A liberation hypothesis predicts an increase in integration, however, an isolation hypothesis predicts a decrease in integration. We combine these hypotheses by specifying that liberation will occur for some dimensions of integration, whereas isolation will occur for...