The association between social participation and cognitive function in community-dwelling older populations: Japan Gerontological Evaluation Study at Taisetsu community Hokkaido.

Objective: To study the association between the number of area-level and individual-level social participation items and cognitive function in the community-dwelling older populations of three towns in Hokkaido, Japan.

Methods: A survey on the frequency of social participation was mailed to those in the Japan Gerontological Evaluation Study 2013 who were aged ≥65 years, were not certified as needing long-term care, and lived in Higashikawa, Higashikagura, or Biei. A subset of participants aged 70-74 years completed the Japanese version of the Montreal Cognitive Assessment in a home visit survey. Both the area-level and individual-level social participation and demographic information were obtained on the self-administered questionnaire. A multilevel analysis using a generalized linear mixed-effects model was used to examine the association between variables in the area-level and individual-level social participation items and cognitive function.

Results: Out of 4042 respondents, data from 2576 were used in the area-level analysis. Of those, 180 were aged 70-74 years and completed the home visit survey for the individual-level analysis. A greater number of higher social participation items at the individual level was associated with higher cognitive function scores after adjusting for area-level social participation variables and confounders (regression coefficient: 0.19; 95% confidence interval: 0.03, 0.35). There were no significant associations between area-level social participation item averages and individual-level cognitive function scores.

Conclusions: Older populations participating in many kinds of social activities exhibited preserved cognitive function even after adjusting for area-level social participation variables. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.