https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1234-8296
Abstract
Literature regarding successful aging reflects a wide variety of fields and perspectives. Given the range of definitions and approaches found in published literature, it is important to investigate clusters of topics studied over time. This study aimed to show the change of topic clusters within successful aging studies.
The study used topic modeling methodology to analyze vast amounts of abstract data. Among publications collected from Scopus (4,458) and Web of Science (5,187), 5,610 publications were analyzed. Topic clusters were analyzed in 2 ways: by (a) division of time (1960s–1990s, 2000s, 2010s, 2020s) and (b) all years combined.
In the 1960s–1990s, 11 topic clusters ranging from health to emotional well-being emerged without any dominant domain. In the 2000s, 2 clusters related to social support and health appeared as major clusters. In the 2010s, 1 topic cluster that included words related to health and social participation was the biggest. In the 2020s, emotional health and social participation appeared again as one of the major clusters and health-related topics started to diverge into subgroups like physical health and mental health. In all years of publications combined, the major cluster involved words that are related to either health or social domains.
Results revealed that successful aging has been studied in many fields using multidimensional perspectives. The dominant categories were health and social domains. These findings suggest interprofessional practice, an interdisciplinary approach in research, and multisector involvement in policy.
Successful aging started to form its shape based on the distinction between usual aging and successful aging made by Rowe and Kahn (1987). Rowe and Kahn (1997) also proposed a model of successful aging with three key components, which are to avoid disease and disability, to be engaged with life, and to maintain high cognitive and physical functioning. However, since the introduction of successful aging, the definition, concept, and utilization of successful aging have been expanded beyond such scope (Martinson & Berridge, 2015).
Successful aging is multidimensional (Depp & Jeste, 2006; Teater & Chonody, 2020). Through a systematic literature review, Depp and Jeste (2006) found that although physical health without any impairment or disabilities commonly appeared as an important element of successful aging, social engagement, and positive attitude toward life were sometimes favored more than physical status. Similarly, Teater and Chonody (2020) also concluded that based on their review of 22 studies regarding older adults’ definition of successful aging, 12 components are considered part of successful aging: optimism, healthy status, financial security, adaptation to changes, engagement in pleasant activities and social activities, spirituality, stable living environment (including social policy), autonomy, cognitive health, exercise, and a good death. Based on those two review studies, it can be said that scholars have commonly found social activities and social engagement as well as optimistic attitudes toward life as common components of successful aging. As can be seen from the variety of definitions and components of successful aging, successful aging studies did not bind to one or two disciplines but rather have been multidisciplinary or even interdisciplinary. In studying those influences and impacts, successful aging-related topics have been expanded throughout disciplines.
Previous literature has approached the topic of successful aging in various aspects such as (1) operational definitions of successful aging over time (Depp & Jeste, 2006), (2) social gerontology perspective on successful aging models (Martinson & Berridge, 2015), (3) perception in successful aging (Feng & Straughan, 2017; Romo et al., 2013), and (4) many other variables associated with successful aging such as quality of life (Sharma, 2020), life satisfaction (Torregrosa-Ruiz et al., 2021), depression (Jeste et al., 2013), social participation (Douglas et al., 2016), and so on. However, it is yet unknown what topics were discussed regarding successful aging over time, across the disciplines. With the increasing volume of studies regarding successful aging, there is a need to conduct a review to better understand the relevant topics across different disciplines. In particular, because successful aging is studied in various fields, there is a need to see the topic development in all those disciplines over time since the concept emerged. Given the range of definitions and approaches found in the published literature, it is important to investigate clusters of topics studied over time in multiple disciplines as massive data collection is now possible through topic modeling methodology. Topic modeling methodology, based on the assumption that documents consist of combinations of topics (Barde & Bainwad, 2017), identifies underlying semantics that can be clustered as topics (Kherwa & Bansal, 2018). It is a helpful tool that processes a large amount of literature in a relatively short time compared to manual exploratory literature reviews such as systematic literature reviews and scoping reviews (Asmussen & Møller, 2019). Investigating what words appear as keywords and how those clusters of keywords change over time helps our understanding of what topics grew or faded, and what topics are starting to build their own realm.
Therefore, using bibliographic records and abstracts of publications throughout the history of successful aging studies, this study aimed to identify the trend of topic clusters that changed over time across disciplines.
Method
The study identified trends in studies of successful aging by using topic modeling methodology that can analyze vast amounts of text data. This study is preregistered through Open Science Forum (https://osf.io/jd79p). The overall methodology consisted of four stages (see Figure 1). The first step was data collection and abstract extraction, the second step was data preprocessing and identification of keywords, the third step was to identify word appearance frequency and generate a semantic network based on a co-occurrence matrix, and the fourth step was to analyze the semantic network. The first author of this paper conducted both data collection and data preprocessing, and the second author joined in data analysis after topic clusters were created from semantic network.
Research procedure.
Data Collection
The search phrase for data collection was “successful aging,” and inclusion criteria were that (a) the document mentioned “successful aging” in the title, abstract, or keywords, and (b) the document provided a complete abstract in English. Bibliographic records including abstract data were collected from Scopus (4,458 publications) and Web of Science (5,187 publications) until December 2023. Bibliographic records included the types of journals, abstracts, titles, years, and language of sources. Among 9,645 publications collected, 2,476 publications were identified as duplicates, and 1,559 publications were deleted because the abstracts were unable to be retrieved or incomplete. Therefore, in total, 5,610 publications were collected for analysis (see Figures 2 and 3).
Numbers of publications by years in table.
Number of publications by years.
Data Preprocessing
To analyze text data and generate a semantic network, the publication year and abstract were extracted using Python. Data preprocessing began with eliminating stopwords, which indicates the words that are not considered for analysis. Stopwords include numbers, pronouns, and other title-related words or statistics-related words (i.e., introduction, background, methods, conclusion, p value, percent, etc.). Then, synonymous words were represented with one word (e.g., “home” representing both “home” and “house”) and compound words were grouped together so that they would not be analyzed separately (e.g., “older adults,” “quality of life,” and “daily life”). All the words in abstracts were identified with part of speech tags and only nouns were considered for analysis as this paper seeks the core keywords and keyword groups over time.
After the extraction, each keyword and co-occurrence were generated as a semantic network. A semantic network is comprised of nodes and edges. Nodes indicate an object or concept and here, they are words extracted from abstracts. Edges indicate the relation between nodes and here, they are co-occurrence of words within each abstract. To conduct network analysis, the Gephi 0.10.1 version, which is software that helps understand and explore networks and graphs, was used (Gephi, n.d.).
For the clustering of topics, modularity was used for calculation. Modularity is “a measure of the quality of a particular division of a network” (Newman & Girvan, 2004, p. 7). Simply put, modularity re-measures the links between nodes to identify word clusters that show strong connectivity within the keywords in the same group but weak connectivity across the keywords in the other group (Newman & Girvan, 2004).
Data Analysis
As this study focused on identifying the topic of cluster trends in successful aging, cluster detection was the major analysis undertaken. Clusters are often called communities or modules (Amin et al., 2018) and they represent a group of connected vertices that share common characteristics (Fortunato, 2010). In this study, cluster detection was conducted based on modularity. It was conducted five times in total. Decades were divided into four different periods—1960s–1990s, 2000s, 2010s, and 2020s. Unlike other time periods that were groups within decades, records from 1960s to 1990s were analyzed and grouped together due to the small number of articles during that period. For the overall topic clusters, all publications were combined and analyzed again.
Findings
Data analyses revealed several topic clusters within successful aging studies. The paper presents the topic clusters from four different periods and general topics that appeared from all the years of publications combined (see Table 1).
Topic Clusters of Successful Aging
| Years | Cluster ID | Number of words | Frequency (%) | Examples of word list |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1960s–1990s | A1 | 329 | 15.96 | activity, support, education, condition, family, characteristic, ability, belief, network, measurement |
| A2 | 273 | 13.25 | older adult, change, service, program, leisure, strategy, practice, creativity, challenge, community, concept, society, benefit, participation, movement, fitness | |
| A3 | 266 | 12.91 | performance, physical activity, brain, disability, train, growth, exercise, recovery, damage, maintenance, stress, risk factor, chronic, capacity | |
| A4 | 258 | 12.52 | health, memory, behavior, symptoms, life satisfaction, curiosity, movement, anxiety, mental health, harmony, personality | |
| A5 | 250 | 12.13 | disease, longevity, system, cognitive, blood, period, cause, cell, observation, impairment, neuron, vitamin, antioxidant, supplementation | |
| A6 | 152 | 7.38 | measure, depression, quality, sleep, bereavement, survivor, possibility | |
| A7 | 146 | 7.08 | age, heart, failure, dynamic, lose, mechanism, oxygen, intelligence, frailty, existence, culture, comorbidity, deterioration | |
| A8 | 138 | 6.7 | patient, death, dementia, thyroid, transfer, siblings, relatives, gene, hormone | |
| A9 | 103 | 5 | experience, emotion, partner, contact, knowledge, daily activity, event, resource, interaction, expectation, energy | |
| A10 | 75 | 3.64 | stability, cortisol, fracture, exposure, antibody, vaccination, virus | |
| A11 | 71 | 3.44 | use, treatment, mind-body, disorder, technique, therapy, effectiveness, physician, arthritis | |
| 2000s | B1 | 1,438 | 28.47 | process, support, program, influence, experience, use, education, value, society, community, family, ability, characteristic, quality of life, service, satisfaction, issue, strategy, successful aging, leisure, technology, cognitive, policy, social activity, mental health |
| B2 | 1,158 | 22.93 | disease, activity, longevity, system, brain, stress, cell, order, capacity, cause, gene, inflammation, determinant, disorder, immune | |
| B3 | 868 | 17.18 | change, measure, physical activity, mortality, performance, disability, memory, risk factor, blood, impairment, symptom | |
| B4 | 710 | 14.06 | health, older adult, condition, patient, death, treatment, quality, management, caregiver, morbidity, expectancy, cost, medicine, technology, healthcare, circumstance | |
| B5 | 543 | 10.75 | age, image, spirituality, youth, capital, trait, geriatrics, journey, consciousness, revolution, neurosignals, technology | |
| B6 | 285 | 5.64 | exercise, depression, marriage, market, direction, consumer, speech, movement, creativity, hear, sport | |
| B7 | 49 | 0.97 | nutrition, prevent, interaction, recommendation, future, investigation, guideline, genomic, discipline, endeavor, nutrigenetic | |
| 2010s | C1 | 3,167 | 30.92 | health, older adult, support, experience, program, education, influence, depression, activity, participation, life satisfaction, leisure, satisfaction, social activity, anxiety, loneliness, emotion |
| C2 | 2,677 | 26.13 | age, change, process, disease, longevity, exercise, brain, memory, system, stress, death, treatment, growth, cognition, disorder, technology, policy | |
| C3 | 1,920 | 18.74 | society, focus, challenge, family, strategy, gender, ability, practice, resource, successful aging, service, network, impact, issue, retirement, mental health | |
| C4 | 1,870 | 18.25 | use, measure, physical activity, disability, intervention, quality of life, frailty, questionnaire, mortality, symptoms, prevalence, impairment, dementia, nutrition | |
| C5 | 496 | 4.84 | condition, performance, resilience, train, fitness, transition, vulnerability, athlete, event, expert, physique | |
| C6 | 96 | 0.94 | parent, deterioration, clinician, hospital, admission, entry, medicare, facility, beneficiaries, traumatization | |
| C7 | 18 | 0.18 | outsider, beholder, visualize, peak, visibility, reputation, sociability | |
| 2020s | D1 | 1,548 | 20.21 | promotion, education, activity, behavior, leisure, family, participation, service, community, influence, life satisfaction, satisfaction, gratitude, emotion, volunteer |
| D2 | 1,488 | 19.43 | function, change, exercise, disease, memory, performance, brain, strength, muscle, capacity, cognitive, longevity, energy, protein | |
| D3 | 1,316 | 17.18 | older adult, health, support, use, place, mental health, intervention, technology, quality, domains, malnutrition, dementia, provider, monitor, policy | |
| D4 | 1,139 | 14.87 | age, experience, sport, dance, fitness, lifestyle, license, reproduction, medicine, athlete, recovery, wellness, choice, uncertainty, queer | |
| D5 | 995 | 12.99 | frailty, depression, resilience, vitamin, deficiency, mortality, disability, perform, impairment, multimorbidity | |
| D6 | 601 | 7.85 | physical activity, measure, delirium, surgery, patient, cost, severity, efficacy, disorder, hospitalization, intensity, medication, patient | |
| D7 | 289 | 3.77 | quality of life, transition, network, determinant, province, diagnose, pensioner | |
| D8 | 202 | 2.64 | prediction, machine, sensitivity, feature, specificity, resident, social factor, fashion, technique | |
| D9 | 81 | 1.06 | generation, insignificant, pastor, accomplishment | |
| All years (1960s–2020s) | E1 | 6,208 | 40.28 | age, health, older adult, support, experience, program, activity, education, influence, community, society, exercise, family, service, participation, life satisfaction, leisure, satisfaction, technology, anxiety, devices, expectation, gerontechnology, religiosity, coordination, clinics, home, suicide, sensor |
| E2 | 3,205 | 20.8 | change, disease, longevity, brain, system, memory, stress, death, capacity, treatment, mechanism, balance, blood, cells, protein, genes, muscle, markers | |
| E3 | 2,714 | 17.61 | measure, physical activity, performance, depression, disability, patient, mortality, frailty, questionnaire, dementia, impairment, symptom, cognition, nutrition, risk factor | |
| E4 | 2,404 | 15.6 | challenge, strategy, ability, successful aging, resources, mental health, benefit, concept, retirement, concern, independence, engagement, policy, environment | |
| E5 | 685 | 4.44 | condition, quality of life, resilience, difficulty, athletes, expert, performance, revolution, physique, movement | |
| E6 | 196 | 1.27 | network, nation, circle, Facebook |
| Years | Cluster ID | Number of words | Frequency (%) | Examples of word list |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1960s–1990s | A1 | 329 | 15.96 | activity, support, education, condition, family, characteristic, ability, belief, network, measurement |
| A2 | 273 | 13.25 | older adult, change, service, program, leisure, strategy, practice, creativity, challenge, community, concept, society, benefit, participation, movement, fitness | |
| A3 | 266 | 12.91 | performance, physical activity, brain, disability, train, growth, exercise, recovery, damage, maintenance, stress, risk factor, chronic, capacity | |
| A4 | 258 | 12.52 | health, memory, behavior, symptoms, life satisfaction, curiosity, movement, anxiety, mental health, harmony, personality | |
| A5 | 250 | 12.13 | disease, longevity, system, cognitive, blood, period, cause, cell, observation, impairment, neuron, vitamin, antioxidant, supplementation | |
| A6 | 152 | 7.38 | measure, depression, quality, sleep, bereavement, survivor, possibility | |
| A7 | 146 | 7.08 | age, heart, failure, dynamic, lose, mechanism, oxygen, intelligence, frailty, existence, culture, comorbidity, deterioration | |
| A8 | 138 | 6.7 | patient, death, dementia, thyroid, transfer, siblings, relatives, gene, hormone | |
| A9 | 103 | 5 | experience, emotion, partner, contact, knowledge, daily activity, event, resource, interaction, expectation, energy | |
| A10 | 75 | 3.64 | stability, cortisol, fracture, exposure, antibody, vaccination, virus | |
| A11 | 71 | 3.44 | use, treatment, mind-body, disorder, technique, therapy, effectiveness, physician, arthritis | |
| 2000s | B1 | 1,438 | 28.47 | process, support, program, influence, experience, use, education, value, society, community, family, ability, characteristic, quality of life, service, satisfaction, issue, strategy, successful aging, leisure, technology, cognitive, policy, social activity, mental health |
| B2 | 1,158 | 22.93 | disease, activity, longevity, system, brain, stress, cell, order, capacity, cause, gene, inflammation, determinant, disorder, immune | |
| B3 | 868 | 17.18 | change, measure, physical activity, mortality, performance, disability, memory, risk factor, blood, impairment, symptom | |
| B4 | 710 | 14.06 | health, older adult, condition, patient, death, treatment, quality, management, caregiver, morbidity, expectancy, cost, medicine, technology, healthcare, circumstance | |
| B5 | 543 | 10.75 | age, image, spirituality, youth, capital, trait, geriatrics, journey, consciousness, revolution, neurosignals, technology | |
| B6 | 285 | 5.64 | exercise, depression, marriage, market, direction, consumer, speech, movement, creativity, hear, sport | |
| B7 | 49 | 0.97 | nutrition, prevent, interaction, recommendation, future, investigation, guideline, genomic, discipline, endeavor, nutrigenetic | |
| 2010s | C1 | 3,167 | 30.92 | health, older adult, support, experience, program, education, influence, depression, activity, participation, life satisfaction, leisure, satisfaction, social activity, anxiety, loneliness, emotion |
| C2 | 2,677 | 26.13 | age, change, process, disease, longevity, exercise, brain, memory, system, stress, death, treatment, growth, cognition, disorder, technology, policy | |
| C3 | 1,920 | 18.74 | society, focus, challenge, family, strategy, gender, ability, practice, resource, successful aging, service, network, impact, issue, retirement, mental health | |
| C4 | 1,870 | 18.25 | use, measure, physical activity, disability, intervention, quality of life, frailty, questionnaire, mortality, symptoms, prevalence, impairment, dementia, nutrition | |
| C5 | 496 | 4.84 | condition, performance, resilience, train, fitness, transition, vulnerability, athlete, event, expert, physique | |
| C6 | 96 | 0.94 | parent, deterioration, clinician, hospital, admission, entry, medicare, facility, beneficiaries, traumatization | |
| C7 | 18 | 0.18 | outsider, beholder, visualize, peak, visibility, reputation, sociability | |
| 2020s | D1 | 1,548 | 20.21 | promotion, education, activity, behavior, leisure, family, participation, service, community, influence, life satisfaction, satisfaction, gratitude, emotion, volunteer |
| D2 | 1,488 | 19.43 | function, change, exercise, disease, memory, performance, brain, strength, muscle, capacity, cognitive, longevity, energy, protein | |
| D3 | 1,316 | 17.18 | older adult, health, support, use, place, mental health, intervention, technology, quality, domains, malnutrition, dementia, provider, monitor, policy | |
| D4 | 1,139 | 14.87 | age, experience, sport, dance, fitness, lifestyle, license, reproduction, medicine, athlete, recovery, wellness, choice, uncertainty, queer | |
| D5 | 995 | 12.99 | frailty, depression, resilience, vitamin, deficiency, mortality, disability, perform, impairment, multimorbidity | |
| D6 | 601 | 7.85 | physical activity, measure, delirium, surgery, patient, cost, severity, efficacy, disorder, hospitalization, intensity, medication, patient | |
| D7 | 289 | 3.77 | quality of life, transition, network, determinant, province, diagnose, pensioner | |
| D8 | 202 | 2.64 | prediction, machine, sensitivity, feature, specificity, resident, social factor, fashion, technique | |
| D9 | 81 | 1.06 | generation, insignificant, pastor, accomplishment | |
| All years (1960s–2020s) | E1 | 6,208 | 40.28 | age, health, older adult, support, experience, program, activity, education, influence, community, society, exercise, family, service, participation, life satisfaction, leisure, satisfaction, technology, anxiety, devices, expectation, gerontechnology, religiosity, coordination, clinics, home, suicide, sensor |
| E2 | 3,205 | 20.8 | change, disease, longevity, brain, system, memory, stress, death, capacity, treatment, mechanism, balance, blood, cells, protein, genes, muscle, markers | |
| E3 | 2,714 | 17.61 | measure, physical activity, performance, depression, disability, patient, mortality, frailty, questionnaire, dementia, impairment, symptom, cognition, nutrition, risk factor | |
| E4 | 2,404 | 15.6 | challenge, strategy, ability, successful aging, resources, mental health, benefit, concept, retirement, concern, independence, engagement, policy, environment | |
| E5 | 685 | 4.44 | condition, quality of life, resilience, difficulty, athletes, expert, performance, revolution, physique, movement | |
| E6 | 196 | 1.27 | network, nation, circle, Facebook |
Notes: The cluster ID was assigned to differentiate the time period, and the letter or the number does not represent specific information.
Topic Clusters of Successful Aging
| Years | Cluster ID | Number of words | Frequency (%) | Examples of word list |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1960s–1990s | A1 | 329 | 15.96 | activity, support, education, condition, family, characteristic, ability, belief, network, measurement |
| A2 | 273 | 13.25 | older adult, change, service, program, leisure, strategy, practice, creativity, challenge, community, concept, society, benefit, participation, movement, fitness | |
| A3 | 266 | 12.91 | performance, physical activity, brain, disability, train, growth, exercise, recovery, damage, maintenance, stress, risk factor, chronic, capacity | |
| A4 | 258 | 12.52 | health, memory, behavior, symptoms, life satisfaction, curiosity, movement, anxiety, mental health, harmony, personality | |
| A5 | 250 | 12.13 | disease, longevity, system, cognitive, blood, period, cause, cell, observation, impairment, neuron, vitamin, antioxidant, supplementation | |
| A6 | 152 | 7.38 | measure, depression, quality, sleep, bereavement, survivor, possibility | |
| A7 | 146 | 7.08 | age, heart, failure, dynamic, lose, mechanism, oxygen, intelligence, frailty, existence, culture, comorbidity, deterioration | |
| A8 | 138 | 6.7 | patient, death, dementia, thyroid, transfer, siblings, relatives, gene, hormone | |
| A9 | 103 | 5 | experience, emotion, partner, contact, knowledge, daily activity, event, resource, interaction, expectation, energy | |
| A10 | 75 | 3.64 | stability, cortisol, fracture, exposure, antibody, vaccination, virus | |
| A11 | 71 | 3.44 | use, treatment, mind-body, disorder, technique, therapy, effectiveness, physician, arthritis | |
| 2000s | B1 | 1,438 | 28.47 | process, support, program, influence, experience, use, education, value, society, community, family, ability, characteristic, quality of life, service, satisfaction, issue, strategy, successful aging, leisure, technology, cognitive, policy, social activity, mental health |
| B2 | 1,158 | 22.93 | disease, activity, longevity, system, brain, stress, cell, order, capacity, cause, gene, inflammation, determinant, disorder, immune | |
| B3 | 868 | 17.18 | change, measure, physical activity, mortality, performance, disability, memory, risk factor, blood, impairment, symptom | |
| B4 | 710 | 14.06 | health, older adult, condition, patient, death, treatment, quality, management, caregiver, morbidity, expectancy, cost, medicine, technology, healthcare, circumstance | |
| B5 | 543 | 10.75 | age, image, spirituality, youth, capital, trait, geriatrics, journey, consciousness, revolution, neurosignals, technology | |
| B6 | 285 | 5.64 | exercise, depression, marriage, market, direction, consumer, speech, movement, creativity, hear, sport | |
| B7 | 49 | 0.97 | nutrition, prevent, interaction, recommendation, future, investigation, guideline, genomic, discipline, endeavor, nutrigenetic | |
| 2010s | C1 | 3,167 | 30.92 | health, older adult, support, experience, program, education, influence, depression, activity, participation, life satisfaction, leisure, satisfaction, social activity, anxiety, loneliness, emotion |
| C2 | 2,677 | 26.13 | age, change, process, disease, longevity, exercise, brain, memory, system, stress, death, treatment, growth, cognition, disorder, technology, policy | |
| C3 | 1,920 | 18.74 | society, focus, challenge, family, strategy, gender, ability, practice, resource, successful aging, service, network, impact, issue, retirement, mental health | |
| C4 | 1,870 | 18.25 | use, measure, physical activity, disability, intervention, quality of life, frailty, questionnaire, mortality, symptoms, prevalence, impairment, dementia, nutrition | |
| C5 | 496 | 4.84 | condition, performance, resilience, train, fitness, transition, vulnerability, athlete, event, expert, physique | |
| C6 | 96 | 0.94 | parent, deterioration, clinician, hospital, admission, entry, medicare, facility, beneficiaries, traumatization | |
| C7 | 18 | 0.18 | outsider, beholder, visualize, peak, visibility, reputation, sociability | |
| 2020s | D1 | 1,548 | 20.21 | promotion, education, activity, behavior, leisure, family, participation, service, community, influence, life satisfaction, satisfaction, gratitude, emotion, volunteer |
| D2 | 1,488 | 19.43 | function, change, exercise, disease, memory, performance, brain, strength, muscle, capacity, cognitive, longevity, energy, protein | |
| D3 | 1,316 | 17.18 | older adult, health, support, use, place, mental health, intervention, technology, quality, domains, malnutrition, dementia, provider, monitor, policy | |
| D4 | 1,139 | 14.87 | age, experience, sport, dance, fitness, lifestyle, license, reproduction, medicine, athlete, recovery, wellness, choice, uncertainty, queer | |
| D5 | 995 | 12.99 | frailty, depression, resilience, vitamin, deficiency, mortality, disability, perform, impairment, multimorbidity | |
| D6 | 601 | 7.85 | physical activity, measure, delirium, surgery, patient, cost, severity, efficacy, disorder, hospitalization, intensity, medication, patient | |
| D7 | 289 | 3.77 | quality of life, transition, network, determinant, province, diagnose, pensioner | |
| D8 | 202 | 2.64 | prediction, machine, sensitivity, feature, specificity, resident, social factor, fashion, technique | |
| D9 | 81 | 1.06 | generation, insignificant, pastor, accomplishment | |
| All years (1960s–2020s) | E1 | 6,208 | 40.28 | age, health, older adult, support, experience, program, activity, education, influence, community, society, exercise, family, service, participation, life satisfaction, leisure, satisfaction, technology, anxiety, devices, expectation, gerontechnology, religiosity, coordination, clinics, home, suicide, sensor |
| E2 | 3,205 | 20.8 | change, disease, longevity, brain, system, memory, stress, death, capacity, treatment, mechanism, balance, blood, cells, protein, genes, muscle, markers | |
| E3 | 2,714 | 17.61 | measure, physical activity, performance, depression, disability, patient, mortality, frailty, questionnaire, dementia, impairment, symptom, cognition, nutrition, risk factor | |
| E4 | 2,404 | 15.6 | challenge, strategy, ability, successful aging, resources, mental health, benefit, concept, retirement, concern, independence, engagement, policy, environment | |
| E5 | 685 | 4.44 | condition, quality of life, resilience, difficulty, athletes, expert, performance, revolution, physique, movement | |
| E6 | 196 | 1.27 | network, nation, circle, Facebook |
| Years | Cluster ID | Number of words | Frequency (%) | Examples of word list |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1960s–1990s | A1 | 329 | 15.96 | activity, support, education, condition, family, characteristic, ability, belief, network, measurement |
| A2 | 273 | 13.25 | older adult, change, service, program, leisure, strategy, practice, creativity, challenge, community, concept, society, benefit, participation, movement, fitness | |
| A3 | 266 | 12.91 | performance, physical activity, brain, disability, train, growth, exercise, recovery, damage, maintenance, stress, risk factor, chronic, capacity | |
| A4 | 258 | 12.52 | health, memory, behavior, symptoms, life satisfaction, curiosity, movement, anxiety, mental health, harmony, personality | |
| A5 | 250 | 12.13 | disease, longevity, system, cognitive, blood, period, cause, cell, observation, impairment, neuron, vitamin, antioxidant, supplementation | |
| A6 | 152 | 7.38 | measure, depression, quality, sleep, bereavement, survivor, possibility | |
| A7 | 146 | 7.08 | age, heart, failure, dynamic, lose, mechanism, oxygen, intelligence, frailty, existence, culture, comorbidity, deterioration | |
| A8 | 138 | 6.7 | patient, death, dementia, thyroid, transfer, siblings, relatives, gene, hormone | |
| A9 | 103 | 5 | experience, emotion, partner, contact, knowledge, daily activity, event, resource, interaction, expectation, energy | |
| A10 | 75 | 3.64 | stability, cortisol, fracture, exposure, antibody, vaccination, virus | |
| A11 | 71 | 3.44 | use, treatment, mind-body, disorder, technique, therapy, effectiveness, physician, arthritis | |
| 2000s | B1 | 1,438 | 28.47 | process, support, program, influence, experience, use, education, value, society, community, family, ability, characteristic, quality of life, service, satisfaction, issue, strategy, successful aging, leisure, technology, cognitive, policy, social activity, mental health |
| B2 | 1,158 | 22.93 | disease, activity, longevity, system, brain, stress, cell, order, capacity, cause, gene, inflammation, determinant, disorder, immune | |
| B3 | 868 | 17.18 | change, measure, physical activity, mortality, performance, disability, memory, risk factor, blood, impairment, symptom | |
| B4 | 710 | 14.06 | health, older adult, condition, patient, death, treatment, quality, management, caregiver, morbidity, expectancy, cost, medicine, technology, healthcare, circumstance | |
| B5 | 543 | 10.75 | age, image, spirituality, youth, capital, trait, geriatrics, journey, consciousness, revolution, neurosignals, technology | |
| B6 | 285 | 5.64 | exercise, depression, marriage, market, direction, consumer, speech, movement, creativity, hear, sport | |
| B7 | 49 | 0.97 | nutrition, prevent, interaction, recommendation, future, investigation, guideline, genomic, discipline, endeavor, nutrigenetic | |
| 2010s | C1 | 3,167 | 30.92 | health, older adult, support, experience, program, education, influence, depression, activity, participation, life satisfaction, leisure, satisfaction, social activity, anxiety, loneliness, emotion |
| C2 | 2,677 | 26.13 | age, change, process, disease, longevity, exercise, brain, memory, system, stress, death, treatment, growth, cognition, disorder, technology, policy | |
| C3 | 1,920 | 18.74 | society, focus, challenge, family, strategy, gender, ability, practice, resource, successful aging, service, network, impact, issue, retirement, mental health | |
| C4 | 1,870 | 18.25 | use, measure, physical activity, disability, intervention, quality of life, frailty, questionnaire, mortality, symptoms, prevalence, impairment, dementia, nutrition | |
| C5 | 496 | 4.84 | condition, performance, resilience, train, fitness, transition, vulnerability, athlete, event, expert, physique | |
| C6 | 96 | 0.94 | parent, deterioration, clinician, hospital, admission, entry, medicare, facility, beneficiaries, traumatization | |
| C7 | 18 | 0.18 | outsider, beholder, visualize, peak, visibility, reputation, sociability | |
| 2020s | D1 | 1,548 | 20.21 | promotion, education, activity, behavior, leisure, family, participation, service, community, influence, life satisfaction, satisfaction, gratitude, emotion, volunteer |
| D2 | 1,488 | 19.43 | function, change, exercise, disease, memory, performance, brain, strength, muscle, capacity, cognitive, longevity, energy, protein | |
| D3 | 1,316 | 17.18 | older adult, health, support, use, place, mental health, intervention, technology, quality, domains, malnutrition, dementia, provider, monitor, policy | |
| D4 | 1,139 | 14.87 | age, experience, sport, dance, fitness, lifestyle, license, reproduction, medicine, athlete, recovery, wellness, choice, uncertainty, queer | |
| D5 | 995 | 12.99 | frailty, depression, resilience, vitamin, deficiency, mortality, disability, perform, impairment, multimorbidity | |
| D6 | 601 | 7.85 | physical activity, measure, delirium, surgery, patient, cost, severity, efficacy, disorder, hospitalization, intensity, medication, patient | |
| D7 | 289 | 3.77 | quality of life, transition, network, determinant, province, diagnose, pensioner | |
| D8 | 202 | 2.64 | prediction, machine, sensitivity, feature, specificity, resident, social factor, fashion, technique | |
| D9 | 81 | 1.06 | generation, insignificant, pastor, accomplishment | |
| All years (1960s–2020s) | E1 | 6,208 | 40.28 | age, health, older adult, support, experience, program, activity, education, influence, community, society, exercise, family, service, participation, life satisfaction, leisure, satisfaction, technology, anxiety, devices, expectation, gerontechnology, religiosity, coordination, clinics, home, suicide, sensor |
| E2 | 3,205 | 20.8 | change, disease, longevity, brain, system, memory, stress, death, capacity, treatment, mechanism, balance, blood, cells, protein, genes, muscle, markers | |
| E3 | 2,714 | 17.61 | measure, physical activity, performance, depression, disability, patient, mortality, frailty, questionnaire, dementia, impairment, symptom, cognition, nutrition, risk factor | |
| E4 | 2,404 | 15.6 | challenge, strategy, ability, successful aging, resources, mental health, benefit, concept, retirement, concern, independence, engagement, policy, environment | |
| E5 | 685 | 4.44 | condition, quality of life, resilience, difficulty, athletes, expert, performance, revolution, physique, movement | |
| E6 | 196 | 1.27 | network, nation, circle, Facebook |
Notes: The cluster ID was assigned to differentiate the time period, and the letter or the number does not represent specific information.
Successful Aging From the 1960s to the 1990s
There were 182 publications collected within this period, and 2,061 words were found to be meaningful nouns or keywords that can guide topic clusters. In total, 11 clusters were detected, which indicates that there were diverse topic clusters, but no one big trend led the studies of successful aging during this period. It is likely that this was the period of exploration where the topics regarding successful aging started to emerge in many disciplines, not forming only one or two big clusters.
Successful Aging in the 2000s
There were 933 publications collected within this period, and 5,051 words were included in the analysis for clustering. In total, seven clusters were detected. Two of the biggest clusters were clusters B1 (1,438 words, 28.47%) and B2 (1158 words, 22.93%). B1 consisted of the words that describe social support and mental health such as family, leisure, social activity, and quality of life. B2 consisted of words more associated with health in general, such as disease, longevity, brain, cell, gene, etc. In fact, other clusters like B3 (868 words, 17.18%) and B4 (710 words, 14.06%) consisted of health-related words but B3 included physical health such as physical activity and mortality, whereas B4 included patient, death, treatment, and caregiver. Interestingly, B7 (49 words, 0.97%) was a very small cluster, with words like nutrition, prevent, interaction, recommendation, future, investigation, guideline, genomic, discipline, endeavor, and nutrigenetic that made it difficult to label.
Successful Aging in the 2010s
There were 2,919 publications collected within this period, and 10,244 words were included in the analysis. In total, seven clusters were detected. Cluster C1 (3,167 words, 30.92%) included words such as health, older adult, support, education, activity, participation, life satisfaction, social activity, and emotions forming the biggest topic of the 2010s. On the other hand, cluster C7 (18 words, 0.18%) was a mixture of words that technically do not fall into any other category reflecting lower connectivity among these co-occurring words such as outsider, beholder, visualize, peak, etc. These are simply leftover words.
Successful Aging in the 2020s
There were 1,576 publications collected within this period, and 7,659 words were included in the analysis. In total, nine clusters were detected. Cluster D1 (1,548 words, 20.21%) showed topics related to emotional well-being and social participation such as activity, leisure, family, participation, service, community, and life satisfaction. Clusters D2 (1,488 words, 19.43%), D3 (1,316 words, 17.18%), D5 (995 words, 12.99%), and D6 (601 words, 7.85%) seemed to show that health-related topics have diverged into multiple subgroups. On the other hand, clusters D4 (1,139 words, 14.87%), D7 (289 words, 3.77%), D8 (202 words, 2.64%), and D9 (81 words, 1.06%) all showed words that are difficult to label with a common theme.
Seven Decades of Successful Aging Trends
There were 5,610 publications and 15,412 words detected from abstracts in total when all studies from 1963 to 2023 were combined. Here, six clusters were discovered. Cluster E1 consisted of 6,208 words (40.28%) such as age, health, older adult, support, experience, activity, education, community, society, exercise, family, service, participation, life satisfaction, leisure, technology, anxiety, clinic, etc. This was the major cluster that involved more than one-third of total meaningful words detected and it is a combination of most of the approaches combined throughout the years. Here again, cluster E6 (196 words, 1.27%) seemed to have words that are difficult to group.
Discussion
Previous literature reviews or scoping reviews have focused on various aspects of successful aging but they accounted for different focuses such as successful aging and personality (Serrat et al., 2024), definition and predictors of successful aging (Depp & Jeste, 2006), definitions, factors, and principles of successful aging (Estebsari et al., 2020), operational definitions of successful aging (Cosco et al., 2014), concerns and suggestions regarding successful aging models within the social gerontology literature (Martinson & Berridge, 2015), dimensions contribute to constructing the concept of successful aging (Zanjari et al., 2017), cross-cultural review of older adults explaining what successful aging means to them (Reich et al., 2020), and older adults’ perspectives on successful aging (Teater & Chonody, 2020). They are either focusing on definitions of successful aging or factors and predictors related to successful aging. However, the current study, by using a topic modeling approach that enables an exploratory literature review through a massive amount of documents, aimed to identify the overall trend of topic clusters that changed over time and across disciplines rather than focusing on specific aspects of successful aging. Interestingly, only cluster E1 showed the sign of being a dominant topic cluster because it included 40.28% of meaningful words extracted. Other than this cluster, all the topics in other periods were relatively similarly distributed. This means that the successful aging literature was not dominated by one or two topics or disciplines, but in fact, successful aging was approached in various ways and contexts. Such results are aligned with the multidimensional character of successful aging definitions described in other types of reviews (Cosco et al., 2014; Depp & Jeste, 2006).
Although there was no one dominant topic cluster in each period, two topics—health and social domains—have repeatedly appeared. Health clusters included subtopics or keywords like mental health, physical activities, exercises, biomarkers, and disability (as in A3–5, A7–8, A10–11, B2–4, C1–2, C4, C6, D2–6, and E1–4). Social domain clusters included subtopics or keywords like family, sibling, caregivers, social activities, community, environment, engagement, and participation (as in A1–2, A9, B1, C3, D1, D8, and E6).
Although some clusters suggested a label that could capture the theme of words that were identified in the clusters, other clusters revealed mixed results. This finding suggests the multidimensional character of successful aging studies and the lack of consistency in the definition and models of successful aging. Perhaps what is needed is agreement on a broad definition of successful aging that permits and indeed encourages multidisciplinary investigations. This suggests to the research field that interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary contributions are needed in studying successful aging, and it parallels conclusions from other reviews of successful aging literature (Cosco et al., 2014; Zanjari et al., 2017).
Successful aging by definition is already multidimensional, and it can be studied in many disciplines such as social work, public health, medicine, psychology, nursing, and so on. Interdisciplinary collaboration in research aims for a thorough understanding of successful aging and its factors and consequences. Greater involvement from different perspectives such as nutrition and technology may help expand their presence as clusters by offering their own keywords such as robotics, smart systems, smartphone, and fall detection for technology, and diet, food, nutrient, and calorie for nutrition. The multidimensional character of successful aging not only attracts interdisciplinary collaborations to undertake research but also attracts interprofessional collaboration for practice. Engaging different professions in resolving problems, especially in health care, would help professionals to be exposed to new ideas and give more opportunities for staff to discover a broader range of community resources (Illingworth & Chelvanayagam, 2007, 2017). As an example from one profession, the Council for Social Work Education encourages social work students to experience interprofessional education and partnerships as it would help them to experience perspectives from different professions with the expectation for better health care outcomes (Advancing Interprofessional Education, n.d.). The recognition of the multidisciplinary and multidimensional nature of successful aging—found previously in traditional reviews and reinforced by this natural language processing methodology—clearly suggests that in policy advocacy, multiple sectors and different types of stakeholders need to be involved. The voices of those with lived experience are needed to help formulate and advance successful aging initiatives.
Limitations
From a methodological perspective, limitations concerning the use of topic modeling and abstract analysis should be noted. As for the analysis, three issues may affect the results. First, many papers were excluded because they did not provide abstracts, or they provided abstracts that were incomplete. Second, as this study relied on the bibliometric data provided by the journals, the information that was not attached to the data was inevitably ignored. For instance, journal websites provided information about regions, countries, types of documents, and more, but in retrieving the data, these variables were not linked with each bibliographic record which made it difficult to analyze once the data were downloaded from the database website and merged for analyses. Therefore, third, although the study aimed to analyze data considering successful aging studies across disciplines, due to the limitations of the journal information, this study was not able to discover what topic clusters were dominant in certain disciplines or how disciplines differ in studying successful aging. Although it is not a limitation, it is important to note that this methodology, unlike a systematic or scoping review, does not incorporate reviewing article by article.
However, despite the limitations, the findings in this study have generally achieved the study aim by providing a general understanding of the topic clusters of successful aging research across time and with a broad range of disciplines.
Conclusion
This review of the seven decades of publications on the topic of successful aging showed how successful aging itself is multidimensional and has not been studied only within single disciplines. The concept and definitions also expanded across disciplines, enabling interdisciplinary approaches to support various perspectives toward successful aging. Even within an extensive library of interdisciplinary studies, two key components stood out. The main components of successful aging studies seemed to be health and social domains, and for health-related topics, subgroups started to emerge making the cluster expanded and more diversified. Successful aging has been studied with different contexts and approaches in physical health, mental health, social networks, services and programs, clinical trials with biomarkers, and so on. As of now, health and social domains are the two main elements in the study of successful aging. Assuming multiple disciplines will continue to work in this field, we can expect to see new topic clusters emerge in the future.
Funding
None.
Conflict of Interest
None.
Data Availability
Bibliographic records can be accessed through Scopus and Web of Science. Analytic methods (the coding on Python) are available upon request. This study is preregistered through Open Science Forum (https://osf.io/jd79p).
Author Contributions
Ha-Neul Kim (Conceptualization [Lead], Data curation [Lead], Formal analysis [Lead], Investigation [Lead], Methodology [Lead], Resources [Lead], Software [Lead], Writing—original draft [Lead], Writing—review & editing [Equal]); Paul P. Freddolino (Data curation [Supporting], Methodology [Supporting], Resources [Equal], Supervision [Lead], Validation [Equal], Writing—review & editing [Equal])
