The Sense of Control and Health Outcomes: Evidence from the Americans' Changing Lives Survey

Elizabeth M. Armstrong, Princeton University
James S. House, University of Michigan

A sense of control over the events and outcomes of one's life is highly valued in American society. We examine the strength of the relationship between control and health and seek to advance understanding of this relationship in three significant ways, using a dataset that offers several strengths over existing studies. The Americans' Changing Lives (ACL) study is a nationally representative longitudinal study of psychosocial and socioeconomic predictors of health and aging. The ACL study enables us to examine the relationship between self-efficacy and health in a sample of adults, not just the elderly or the ill. We are able to investigate this relationship not just at a single point in time, but longitudinally, over eight years. Finally, we are able to control for socioeconomic status. In addition, we are able to consider the effect of self-efficacy on a range of health outcomes, including self-rated health, functional impairment and mortality.