THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN HEARING AND FUNCTIONAL MOBILITY AMONG OLDER ADULTS AT BASELINE IN THE CANADIAN LONGITUDINAL STUDY ON AGING

Abstract

Mobility problems, prevalent among older adults, are influenced by numerous factors that are interrelated. The primary purpose was to examine the relationship between hearing, measured by Pure-Tone Audiometry, and mobility, measured by Timed-Up-and-Go test, in Canadians 65–85 years of age, using the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging Comprehensive baseline dataset. The secondary purpose was to examine the association between mobility and hearing further in the context of other explanatory variables. Various levels of impairment in hearing and mobility were observed across the sample. According to the results of the hierarchical multiple linear regression, controlling for age and sex, hearing threshold explained 0.5% (p<.05) of the variation in mobility. A unique contribution of hearing threshold persisted when vision, executive function, life-space mobility, and frailty were added to the model; the total variance explained was 19.2%. This study informs future experimental work concerning the association between hearing and mobility.