The impact of active social media use on the mental health of older adults

BMC Psychology

Table 1 Definitions and descriptive statistics of variables

Variable	Definition	Mean	Standard deviation	Minimum	Maximum
Explained variables
Negative emotion	Continuous variable (8-32)	14.41	5.881	8	32
Positive emotion	Continuous variable (2–8)	5.36	2.055	2	8
Self-rated health	5 = very good; 4 = good; 3 = fair; 2 = bad; 1 = very bad	2.91	1.025	1	5
Health satisfaction	5 = extremely satisfied; 4 = very satisfied; 3 = somewhat satisfied; 2 = not very satisfied; 1 = not at all satisfied	3.14	0.871	1	5
Explanatory variable
Posting on WeChat Moments	1 = yes; 0 = no	0.07	0.260	0	1
Individual variables
Age	Continuous variable	69.17	7.077	60	91
Gender	1 = male; 2 = female	1.51	0.500	1	2
Marital status	1 = with spouse; 0 = without spouse	0.75	0.431	0	1
Education level	Continuous variable	2.99	1.899	1	11
Living arrangement	1 = living with children; 0 = not living with children	0.42	0.494	0	1
Chronic diseases	Number of chronic diseases	0.68	1.031	0	11
Disability status	Number of ADLs that cannot be performed	0.20	0.784	0	6
Family status variables
Family income	Logarithm of respondent’s annual income	9.20	1.753	1.211	17.481
Living area	1 = urban; 0 = rural	0.30	0.460	0	1
N	12,227

ISSN: 2050-7283