Diverse Aspects of Worry among Younger and Older Adults: A Multifaceted Approach

Abstract

The aims of this study were to examine age-differences regarding various worry components among younger and older adults and to characterize the relationships between worry domains and anxiety. A total of 311 younger adults (18 -30 years) and 100 older adults (65+ years) completed seven worry and anxiety questionnaires, focusing on worry content, worry severity, and responses to worry. A series of 2 × 2 ANOVAs was computed to examine differences in worry and anxiety related to age and gender. Interaction effects indicated that gender differences among younger adults were significantly more pronounced than older adults with women reporting greater worry and anxiety than men. Main effects of age indicated that younger adults reported greater worry than older across all worry domains. Worry and anxiety measures were found to be highly correlated across all domains. Findings indicate that worry is fundamentally related to anxiety across age groups and that a variety of aspects of worry should be considered to understand the breadth of worry's influence on anxiety. Additionally, age and gender have unique relationships with worry and anxiety and interact to complicate individuals' symptom profiles. Thus, worry is a multifaceted construct that is crucial to understanding anxiety in general and warrants multifaceted assessment and intervention.

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“…Regarding age, our results showed that younger participants were more concerned than older participants. Previous studies have shown that worry regarding personal matters decreases with age [ 46 , 47 ]; while we evaluated other people’s risk and not personal risk, the same direction was maintained. There were also differences by region, the largest being between Northern and Eastern Europe.…”