Predicting nursing home admissions among incontinent older adults: a comparison of residential differences across six years.

Whether or not rates of nursing home admissions among elders with urinary incontinence varied by their place of residence was investigated. We also examined whether any observed residential differences could be accounted for by factors other than incontinence that are known to influence rates of institutionalization. Data from the Longitudinal Study on Aging (1984-1990) were used to examine a sample who at baseline lived in community settings and reported problems with urinary incontinence (n = 719). Analyses indicate that residents of less urbanized and thinly populated nonmetropolitan counties were more likely to have a nursing home admission than elders in any other residential context. More importantly, these residential differences persisted in multivariate logistic regression models after controls were introduced for sociodemographic characteristics, measures of health status, and indicators of the social support networks of the elders.