Ellen Idler
Biographic Data
| ID | 298069 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ellen Idler |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ellen |
| FAMILY NAME | Idler |
| SIGNATURE | IDLER E |
| AFFILIATIONS | Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3616-5275 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 47 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 521 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 46 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1983 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 12 |
Religion as a social determinant of health in old age
This paper will argue that religion has a special meaning for older adults beyond the findings in the research literature on religion’s effects on health outcomes. Research on religious involvement and health from the past several decades shows a strongly beneficial relationship for persons of all ages, and one that is heightened in old age. Given the pace of secularization, however, the future is uncertain and coming cohorts of older persons may…
Self-rated health predicts mortality -- but it depends on your age
Nursing the Spirit: Care, Public Life, and the Dignity of Vulnerable Strangers
Faith-Based Organizations and Sars-CoV-2 Vaccination: Challenges and Recommendations
Is Secularization an Age-Related Process
Secularization has been studied for decades by sociologists of religion. Long-running surveys in the United States and Europe show steady generational decline in religious affiliation and participation, and yet this trend has largely been ignored by gerontologists and life course researchers. We examined data from the Health and Retirement Study, hypothesizing between-cohort declines in religious participation. Based on data from a sample stratif…
Kerry Egan, On Living
Kerry Egan, On Living (New York: Riverhead Books, 2016), 224 pp., $24.00 (hbk), ISBN: 1594634815
Partnerships Between Public Health Agencies and Faith Communities
Religion and perceptions of community-based conservation in Ghana, West Africa
Adapting community-based protected areas to local context and evaluating their success across a range of possible socio-economic and ecological outcomes depends, in part, on understanding the perceptions of local actors. This article presents results from a mixed methods study that focuses on how and why religious identity, a prominent aspect of Ghanaian culture, is related to perceptions of the performance of several Community Resource Managemen…
What Do We Rate When We Rate Our Health? Decomposing Age-related Contributions to Self-rated Health
Self-ratings of health (SRH) indicate current health-related quality of life and independently predict mortality. Studies show the SRH of older adults appears less influenced by physical health than the SRH of younger adults. But if physical health accounts less for the SRH of older adults, what factors take its place? To understand the relative contributions of social, emotional, and physical states to SRH by age, we analyzed data from the Natio…
Courses in Religion and Public Health
Courses in Religion and Public Health Affiliation Ellen Idler PhD, Doug Oman PhD, Mimi Kiser DMin, MPH, RN, and Carol Hogue PhD, MPHEllen Idler and Carol Hogue are with the Department of Epidemiology, Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University, Atlanta, GA. Doug Oman is with the University of California at Berkeley School of Public Health, Berkeley. Mimi Kiser is with the Interfaith Health Program, Hubert Department of Global Health, Rolli…
Religion in Public Health‐Care Institutions: U.S. and U.K. Perspectives
In this article, we consider the role that religion plays in the health‐care institutions of the United States and the United Kingdom. Religion has played a significant role in the development of health‐care institutions in both countries and continues to be present in them in important ways. To capture the range of involvement of religious groups in various sectors of the health‐care institution, we propose a continuum for their relationship, fr…
Religion and Health: Sociological Considerations
Practical Matters and Ultimate Concerns, 'Doing,' and 'Being: A Diary Study of the Chaplain's Role in the Care of the Seriously Ill in an Urban Acute Care Hospital
Systematic observational studies of the chaplain's role and function in the secular health-care setting are few. With an episode-based diary recorded on handheld digital tablets, palliative care chaplains at a large urban hospital with a diverse patient population recorded details of patient visits in near-real time. Cluster analysis revealed groups of activities we called 'doing' and 'being,' and conversation topics of 'practical matters' and 'u…
Mending Broken Hearts: Marriage and Survival Following Cardiac Surgery
Marriage has long been linked to lower risk for adult mortality in population and clinical studies. In a regional sample of patients ( n = 569) undergoing cardiac surgery, we compared 5-year hazards of mortality for married persons with those of widowed, separated or divorced, and never married persons using data from medical records and psychosocial interviews. After adjusting for demographics and pre- and postsurgical health, unmarried persons …
Religion and the Quality of Life in the Last Year of Life
Overall, QOL in the last year of life is positively related to religious involvement, particularly its more subjective dimensions
Looking Inside the Black Box of “Attendance at Services”: New Measures for Exploring an Old Dimension in Religion and Health Research
Research in religion and health has spurred new interest in measuring religiousness. Measurement efforts have focused on subjective facets of religiousness such as spirituality and beliefs, and less attention has been paid to congregate aspects, beyond the single item measuring attendance at services. We evaluate some new measures for religious experiences occurring during congregational worship services. Respondents (N=576) were religiously-dive…
Course of Depressive Symptoms in Patients Undergoing Heart Surgery: Confirmatory Analysis of the Factor Pattern and Latent Mean Structure of the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale
Objective: The purpose of this study was to examine the dimensionality, stability, and course of depressive symptoms over the 12-month period beginning approximately 1 week before heart surgery. Methods: The Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale (CES-D) was administered to 570 patients before heart surgery and 1, 3.5, 6.5, and 12.5 months later. Results: Confirmatory factor analysis rejected a four-factor model as a result of small …
Response To: “Idler and Kasl’s p Values: A Cautionary Lesson”
Institute for Health, Health Care Policy and Aging Research, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick, NJ 08901 and Yale School of Medicine, Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, New Haven, CT 06520-8034 The authors of this letter were invited to reply to Gary Smith’s “Idler and Kasi p Values: A Cautiionary Lessan,” which appears in this issue
Response To: "Idler and Kasl's p Values: A Cautionary Lesson"
Psychosomatic Medicine, founded in 1939, is the official organ of the American Psychosomatic Society. It publishes experimental and clinical studies dealing with various aspects of the relationships among social, psychological, and behavioral factors and bodily processes in humans and animals. It is an international, interdisciplinary journal devoted to experimental and clinical investigation in behavioral biology, psychiatry, psychology, physiol…
In Sickness but Not in Health: Self-ratings, Identity, and Mortality
Self-rated health as a predictor of mortality has been studied primarily in large, representative populations, with relatively little progress toward understanding the information processing that individuals use to arrive at these ratings. With subsamples of National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) Epidemiologic Follow-up Study (NHEFS) data for respondents with circulatory system disease (N = 3,709) and respondents with no diagno…
Measuring Multiple Dimensions of Religion and Spirituality for Health Research: Conceptual Background and Findings from the 1998 General Social Survey
Progress in studying the relationship between religion and health has been hampered by the absence of an adequate measure of religiousness and spirituality. This article reports on the conceptual and empirical development of an instrument to measure religiousness and spirituality, intended explicitly for studies of health. It is multidimensional to allow investigation of multiple possible mechanisms of effect, brief enough to be included in clini…
The Many Causal Pathways Linking Religion to Health
Journal Article The Many Causal Pathways Linking Religion to Health Get access Ellen L. Idler Ellen L. Idler Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Public Policy & Aging Report, Volume 12, Issue 4, Summer 2002, Pages 7–12, https://doi.org/10.1093/ppar/12.4.7 Published: 01 June 2002
Patterns of Religious Practice and Belief in the Last Year of Life
Community studies of respondents in their last year of life are rare. In this sample, religious involvement appears to continue throughout the last months of life
Survival, Functional Limitations, and Self-rated Health in the NHANES I Epidemiologic Follow-up Study, 1992
This study examined relative hazards for mortality and functional limitations according to poor self-ratings of health using prospective data from the NHANES I Epidemiologic Follow-up Study, a representative sample of US adults aged 25-74 years that has been followed since the First National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES I) was conducted in 1971-1975. Follow-up data were taken from death records and from the 1982 and 1992 reinte…
Positive Affect and Function as Influences on Self-Assessments of Health: Expanding Our View Beyond Illness and Disability
Longitudinal data from 851 elderly residents of a retirement community ( \(\mathrm{mean\ age\ }\mathbf{=}\ 73\ \mathrm{years}\) ) were used to examine the correlates of self-assessments of health (SAH) and the predictors of changes in SAH over several follow-up periods ranging from 1 to 5 years. The authors hypothesized that indicators of positive health, including feelings of energy and positive mood, social support, and active functioning, are …
Self-rated health and mortality in the NHANES-I Epidemiologic Follow-up Study
The ability of self-rated health status to predict mortality was tested with data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES-I) Epidemiologic Follow-Up Study (NHEFS), conducted from 1971-84. The sample consists of adult NHANES-I respondents ages 25-74 years (N = 6,440) for whom data from a comprehensive physical examination at the initial interview and survival status at follow-up are available. Self-rated health consists o…
Positive Affect and Function as Influences on Self-Assessments of Health: Expanding Our View Beyond Illness and Disability
Longitudinal data from 851 elderly residents of a retirement community ( \(\mathrm{mean\ age\ }\mathbf{=}\ 73\ \mathrm{years}\) ) were used to examine the correlates of self-assessments of health (SAH) and the predictors of changes in SAH over several follow-up periods ranging from 1 to 5 years. The authors hypothesized that indicators of positive health, including feelings of energy and positive mood, social support, and active functioning, are …
Religious Involvement and the Health of the Elderly: Some Hypotheses and an Initial Test
Journal Article Religious Involvement and the Health of the Elderly: Some Hypotheses and an Initial Test Get access Ellen L. Idler Ellen L. Idler Rutgers University Address correspondence to the author, Department of Sociology, Lucy Stone Hall, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ 08903. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Social Forces, Volume 66, Issue 1, September 1987, Pages 226–238, https://doi.org/10.10…
Religion among Disabled and Nondisabled Persons I: Cross-sectional Patterns in Health Practices, Social Activities, and Well-being Ellen
What is the relationship between religious involvement and functional disability among elderly people? Is being disabled different for those who frequently attend religious services? Does religious involvement have an effect on subsequent change in disability? Deriving our hypotheses from traditional theories in the sociology of religion, these questions are explored in these two related articles. Both employ data from the New Haven site of the E…
Religion, Disability, Depression, and the Timing of Death
Despite its importance in Durkheim's work, the subject of religion's influence on health and well-being is rarely addressed in contemporary sociological research. This study of elderly persons in New Haven, Connecticut, examines the prospective relationship between religious involvement and several aspects of health status. Results show significant protective effects of public religious in volvement against disability among men and women and of p…
Religion among Disabled and Nondisabled Persons II: Attendance at Religious Services as a Predictor of the Course of Disability
Does religious involvement influence changes in physical health? We perform a longitudinal analysis of the effect of religious participation on functioning over a 12-year follow-up period, in a large, prospective, representative sample of elderly persons from New Haven, Connecticut, a religiously diverse community. To examine the possibility that disability or changes in disability may be affecting religious involvement, we perform a second longi…
In Sickness but Not in Health: Self-ratings, Identity, and Mortality
Self-rated health as a predictor of mortality has been studied primarily in large, representative populations, with relatively little progress toward understanding the information processing that individuals use to arrive at these ratings. With subsamples of National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) Epidemiologic Follow-up Study (NHEFS) data for respondents with circulatory system disease (N = 3,709) and respondents with no diagno…
Self-Rated Health and Physical Disability in Elderly Survivors of a Major Medical Event
This article describes change and stability in self-rated health after a major medical event. Using a prospective design, it examines the ability of premorbid and post-illness health perceptions to predict physical disability independently of medical, psychosocial, and behavioral variables. Participants (N=254) were a subsample of the New Haven cohort of the Established Populations for Epidemiologic Studies of the Elderly (EPESE) project who had …
Religion, Health, and Nonphysical Senses of Self
What Do We Rate When We Rate Our Health? Decomposing Age-related Contributions to Self-rated Health
Self-ratings of health (SRH) indicate current health-related quality of life and independently predict mortality. Studies show the SRH of older adults appears less influenced by physical health than the SRH of younger adults. But if physical health accounts less for the SRH of older adults, what factors take its place? To understand the relative contributions of social, emotional, and physical states to SRH by age, we analyzed data from the Natio…
Looking Inside the Black Box of “Attendance at Services”: New Measures for Exploring an Old Dimension in Religion and Health Research
Research in religion and health has spurred new interest in measuring religiousness. Measurement efforts have focused on subjective facets of religiousness such as spirituality and beliefs, and less attention has been paid to congregate aspects, beyond the single item measuring attendance at services. We evaluate some new measures for religious experiences occurring during congregational worship services. Respondents (N=576) were religiously-dive…
Religion and the Quality of Life in the Last Year of Life
Overall, QOL in the last year of life is positively related to religious involvement, particularly its more subjective dimensions
Mending Broken Hearts: Marriage and Survival Following Cardiac Surgery
Marriage has long been linked to lower risk for adult mortality in population and clinical studies. In a regional sample of patients ( n = 569) undergoing cardiac surgery, we compared 5-year hazards of mortality for married persons with those of widowed, separated or divorced, and never married persons using data from medical records and psychosocial interviews. After adjusting for demographics and pre- and postsurgical health, unmarried persons …
Patterns of Religious Practice and Belief in the Last Year of Life
Community studies of respondents in their last year of life are rare. In this sample, religious involvement appears to continue throughout the last months of life
Partnerships Between Public Health Agencies and Faith Communities
Practical Matters and Ultimate Concerns, 'Doing,' and 'Being: A Diary Study of the Chaplain's Role in the Care of the Seriously Ill in an Urban Acute Care Hospital
Systematic observational studies of the chaplain's role and function in the secular health-care setting are few. With an episode-based diary recorded on handheld digital tablets, palliative care chaplains at a large urban hospital with a diverse patient population recorded details of patient visits in near-real time. Cluster analysis revealed groups of activities we called 'doing' and 'being,' and conversation topics of 'practical matters' and 'u…
Religion in Public Health‐Care Institutions: U.S. and U.K. Perspectives
In this article, we consider the role that religion plays in the health‐care institutions of the United States and the United Kingdom. Religion has played a significant role in the development of health‐care institutions in both countries and continues to be present in them in important ways. To capture the range of involvement of religious groups in various sectors of the health‐care institution, we propose a continuum for their relationship, fr…
Health Care Systems: Here and There
Religious Involvement and the Health of the Elderly: Some Hypotheses and an Initial Test
Journal Article Religious Involvement and the Health of the Elderly: Some Hypotheses and an Initial Test Get access Ellen L. Idler Ellen L. Idler Rutgers University Address correspondence to the author, Department of Sociology, Lucy Stone Hall, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ 08903. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Social Forces, Volume 66, Issue 1, September 1987, Pages 226–238, https://doi.org/10.10…
Moral medicine: Symbolic content in 19th century Shaker therapeutics
Self-Evaluated Health and Mortality Among the Elderly in New Haven, Connecticut, and Iowa and Washington Counties, Iowa, 1982–1986
The ability of global self-evaluations of health to predict survival in follow-up studies is tested in two samples of elderly, noninstitutionalized adults. Data from the Yale Health and Aging Project, New Haven, Connecticut (n = 2,812), and the 65+ Rural Health Study, Iowa and Washington counties, Iowa (n = 3,673), were used to investigate the association between 1982 self-evaluated global health status (excellent, good, fair, poor) and survivors…
Self-rated health and mortality in the NHANES-I Epidemiologic Follow-up Study
The ability of self-rated health status to predict mortality was tested with data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES-I) Epidemiologic Follow-Up Study (NHEFS), conducted from 1971-84. The sample consists of adult NHANES-I respondents ages 25-74 years (N = 6,440) for whom data from a comprehensive physical examination at the initial interview and survival status at follow-up are available. Self-rated health consists o…
Health Perceptions and Survival: Do Global Evaluations of Health Status Really Predict Mortality?
Self-evaluations of health status have been shown to predict mortality, above and beyond the contribution to prediction made by indices based on the presence of health problems, physical disability, and biological or life-style risk factors. Several possible reasons for this association are discussed: (a) methodological shortcomings of previous studies render the association spurious; (b) other psychosocial influences on mortality are involved an…
Aging, Health, and Behavior
Research in the Sociology of Health Care: A Research Annual, Volume 9
Religion, Disability, Depression, and the Timing of Death
Despite its importance in Durkheim's work, the subject of religion's influence on health and well-being is rarely addressed in contemporary sociological research. This study of elderly persons in New Haven, Connecticut, examines the prospective relationship between religious involvement and several aspects of health status. Results show significant protective effects of public religious in volvement against disability among men and women and of p…
Age Differences in Self-Assessments of Health: Age Changes, Cohort Differences, or Survivorship?
Do older people tend to exaggerate their health problems? Or do they downplay them? Do such tendencies change as people age? Are they a function of cohort membership? Or are differences in health perceptions among elderly people due to differences in survivorship within the elderly cohorts? These questions are examined with longitudinal data from the Yale Health and Aging Project, a stratified probability sample of elderly persons in New Haven, C…
Self-Ratings of Health: Do they also Predict change in Functional Ability
Self-ratings of health by individuals responding to surveys have shown themselves to be potent predictors of mortality in a growing number of studies; they appear to contribute significant additional independent information to health status indicators gathered through self-reported health histories or medical examinations. A key question raised by these studies is: What are the mediating processes involved in the association? Specifically, do poo…
Living in the Shadow of Death: Tuberculosis and the Social Experience of Illness in American History
Religion, Health, and Nonphysical Senses of Self
Cohesiveness and Coherence: Religion and the Health of the Elderly
The Gifted Group in Later Maturity. Carole K. Holahan , Robert R. Sears , Lee J. Cronbach
Self-Rated Health and Physical Disability in Elderly Survivors of a Major Medical Event
This article describes change and stability in self-rated health after a major medical event. Using a prospective design, it examines the ability of premorbid and post-illness health perceptions to predict physical disability independently of medical, psychosocial, and behavioral variables. Participants (N=254) were a subsample of the New Haven cohort of the Established Populations for Epidemiologic Studies of the Elderly (EPESE) project who had …
Cohesiveness and Coherence: Religion and the Health of the Elderly
Self-Rated Health and Mortality: A Review of Twenty-Seven Community Studies
We examine the growing number of studies of survey respondents' global self-ratings of health as predictors of mortality in longitudinal studies of representative community samples. Twenty-seven studies in U.S. and international journals show impressively consistent findings. Global self-rated health is an independent predictor of mortality in nearly all of the studies, despite the inclusion of numerous specific health status indicators and other…
Religion among Disabled and Nondisabled Persons II: Attendance at Religious Services as a Predictor of the Course of Disability
Does religious involvement influence changes in physical health? We perform a longitudinal analysis of the effect of religious participation on functioning over a 12-year follow-up period, in a large, prospective, representative sample of elderly persons from New Haven, Connecticut, a religiously diverse community. To examine the possibility that disability or changes in disability may be affecting religious involvement, we perform a second longi…
Religion among Disabled and Nondisabled Persons I: Cross-sectional Patterns in Health Practices, Social Activities, and Well-being Ellen
What is the relationship between religious involvement and functional disability among elderly people? Is being disabled different for those who frequently attend religious services? Does religious involvement have an effect on subsequent change in disability? Deriving our hypotheses from traditional theories in the sociology of religion, these questions are explored in these two related articles. Both employ data from the New Haven site of the E…
Community Studies Reporting Association between Self-Rated Health and Mortality: Additional Studies, 1995 to 1998
The Meanings of Self-Ratings of Health: A Qualitative and Quantitative Approach
Self-ratings of health are central measures of health status that predict outcomes such as mortality and declines in functional ability. Qualitative and quantitative data are used to test the hypothesis that definitions of health that are narrowly biomedical are associated with underestimates of self-ratings relative to respondents’medical histories, while definitions that are broad and inclusive are related to relatively better self-ratings. A s…
Survival, Functional Limitations, and Self-rated Health in the NHANES I Epidemiologic Follow-up Study, 1992
This study examined relative hazards for mortality and functional limitations according to poor self-ratings of health using prospective data from the NHANES I Epidemiologic Follow-up Study, a representative sample of US adults aged 25-74 years that has been followed since the First National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES I) was conducted in 1971-1975. Follow-up data were taken from death records and from the 1982 and 1992 reinte…
Positive Affect and Function as Influences on Self-Assessments of Health: Expanding Our View Beyond Illness and Disability
Longitudinal data from 851 elderly residents of a retirement community ( \(\mathrm{mean\ age\ }\mathbf{=}\ 73\ \mathrm{years}\) ) were used to examine the correlates of self-assessments of health (SAH) and the predictors of changes in SAH over several follow-up periods ranging from 1 to 5 years. The authors hypothesized that indicators of positive health, including feelings of energy and positive mood, social support, and active functioning, are …
Patterns of Religious Practice and Belief in the Last Year of Life
Community studies of respondents in their last year of life are rare. In this sample, religious involvement appears to continue throughout the last months of life
Psychology (34 works) · Medicine (32 works) · Sociology (24 works) · Religion, Spirituality, and Psychology (19 works) · Gerontology (18 works) · Health disparities and outcomes (18 works) · Gerontology (17 works) · Political science (13 works) · Religion, Society, and Development (13 works) · Demography (12 works)