• About this study

Abuse and Neglect of Older People

Secondary analysis of UK study

About this study

This report describes secondary analysis of data from the UK Study of Abuse and Neglect of Older People.

The key aims of the secondary analysis were:

• to explore different definitions of mistreatment
• to examine risk factors 'in context', that is, with other risk factors taken into account
• to explore a wider range of potential risk factors.

Our key findings

When the definition of mistreatment was expanded to include mistreatment by neighbours and acquaintances and single, rather than repeated, incidents of neglect and psychological abuse, the one year prevalence of mistreatment increased to 8.6% from 2.6%, when we only looked at mistreatment by family, friends and care workers.

Using this wider definition, psychological abuse rather than neglect was the most commonly reported form of mistreatment.

How we worked

Researchers from the National Centre for Social Research and King's College London carried out this analysis. The secondary analysis was funded by the Department of Health and Comic Relief.

Potential Policy Impact

This study was part of the PANICOA series of studies - Preventing Abuse and Neglect in Institutional Care of Older Adults - a joint research initiative between Department of Health and Comic Relief to enhance dignity in care.

Methods

Our findings are based on data collected from UK Study of Abuse and Neglect of Older People.

We explored different definitions of mistreatment in more detail. For example, we examined the effect of widening the group of perpetrators to include neighbours and acquaintances as well as family, friends and care workers.

We used multivariate logistic regression to explore different risk factors for mistreatment overall and, where possible, for different forms of mistreatment. This allowed us to assess several risk factors at once and to identify which were still salient when multiple risk factors were taken into account.

Of interest: