The concept of a continuum of residence: Comparing activities of daily living among the elderly

The inadequacies and limitations of dichotomous residential comparisons (e.g. rural/urban or metropolitan/non-metropolitan), coupled with a greater awareness of the diversity that exists among small towns and rural communities, has precipitated a number of attempts to transform the concept of a continuum of residence into an operationalized set of discrete points. If characteristics and conditions of the aged are thought to be systematically associated with the underlying continuum, then it is often assumed that such factors will vary in an unbroken progression as one moves incrementally along the continuum. Using data from the National Health Interview Survey [NCHS, Kovar, M.G. (1986) Advance Data from Vital and Health Statistics, no. 115; NCHS, Kovar, M.G. and Poe, G.S. (1985) Vital and Health Statistics, series 1, no. 18], the distribution of ADL scores along a continuum of residence is explored. Zero-order and multivariate analyses did identify residential differences and patterns in the data; but, there was no support for the conjecture that ADLs would align themselves in conformity to a simple rural-urban residential continuum. The implications for future gerontological research of these results, and of multivariate approaches to determining the effects of residence on the lives of elders, are discussed.