Volunteering and sports clubs linked to higher cognitive scores in older adults in 24 countries

Researchers led by Jiahong Sun of Guangdong Medical University and Bo Xi of Shandong University, with first author Yuedong Wang, pooled five national aging surveys. According to Earth.com, the data cover 57,793 people in 24 countries, followed for about six years earth.comEarth.comearth.comOpen source ↗. The authors describe it as the first analysis to pool five national aging surveys to study social connection. The work was published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.

Which activities were linked to better scores

The surveys were the Health and Retirement Study (US), the English Longitudinal Study of Aging, the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study, the Mexican Health and Aging Study and the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe. The European survey supplied almost half of the participants. Median ages ran from 57 in the Chinese survey to 73 in the American one.

Memory was tested by recalling a short list of words immediately and later. Thinking was tested with tasks such as counting backward from 100 by sevens and naming as many animals as possible in one minute. Scores were converted to one common scale.

In all five surveys, people with at least one social activity scored higher than people with none. Volunteering and sports clubs were linked to better scores in every survey, while training courses and caring for children were linked to faster yearly gains. Political, community, church and religious groups showed no consistent link earth.comEarth.comearth.comOpen source ↗. People with three or more activities scored more than twice as far above the inactive group as people with one activity. Their yearly improvement was faster on the memory test, and on the thinking tasks the yearly difference was too small to separate from chance.

Limits of an observational design

The study shows that joiners scored higher, not that joining caused it. Activities were recorded once, at the start, and the analysis assumed they held for six years; this was not checked. The thinking tests differed between countries, and people who were already sharper may have been the ones who joined. The authors adjusted for age, education, depression, loneliness and other factors, but wrote that other differences could still explain part of the gap.

The study measured test scores, not dementia diagnoses, and counted kinds of activity, not enjoyment, leadership or frequency. Sun said the lack of a link for some groups does not mean they are harmful or ineffective, since associations may depend on social and cultural context. He said next steps are to examine quality, purpose, personal involvement and emotional experience, and to test whether programs for sustained social activity improve cognitive health.