Social Participation Among the Migrant Older Adults With Children: A Latent Class Analysis

ABSTRACT Globally, the number of older migrants is increasing dramatically, and the effect of social participation on health‐related quality of life (HRQOL) among the migrant older adults with children (MOAC) has not yet been reported. This study aims to identify the latent classes of social participation among the MOAC and to determine their effect on the HRQOL and its subfields: physical component summary (PCS) and mental component summary (MCS). This multi‐center cross‐sectional study was conducted in six randomly sampled districts of China, and a total of 850 MOAC were collected from December 2022 to September 2023. Four latent classes were identified based on social participation by latent class analysis: low participation class (22.9%), recreational participation class (45.8%), altruistic participation class (19.5%), and multi‐category participation class (11.8%). Using the low participation class as a reference, the recreational participation class had stronger positive correlations on HRQOL and PCS scores, while the altruistic participation class had stronger positive correlations on MCS scores. Findings contribute to developing tailored health promotion strategies for the MOAC that take social participation as an entry point to improve their HRQOL.