Concurrent and lagged associations of social participation and frailty among older adults

Frailty is a pervasive symptom among the older population, and social participation is a beneficial factor of late-life well-being. However, studies on the bidirectional association between social participation and frailty are limited. This study examined the cross-sectional and lagged associations of social participation and frailty. The analytic sample contained 6865 community-dwelling older adults, with 21,141 observations, from the first four waves (2011–2018) China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS). Frailty was measured by the Frailty Index (FI). Social participation was measured by the accumulation of the frequencies of six social activities. Random intercept two-level models were used to analyse the concurrent and lagged association between social participation and frailty. The results showed significantly cross-sectional associations between higher levels of frailty and lower levels of social participation in the same wave. Moreover, there was a lagged association of social participation in the prior wave with the current frailty (b = −0.001, SE = 0.001, p = 0.028), and frailty in the prior wave with the current social participation (b = −0.634, SE = 0.088, p < 0.001) even after adjusting for sociodemographic characteristics, and frailty or social participation in the prior wave. The bidirectional associations between social participation and frailty imply the necessity of enhancing social participation to prevent or slow the frailty progression, and improving the physical and social environment to reduce social participation restrictions imposed by frailty status.