Background: The relevance of mental health for everyday life functioning and well-being is crucial. In this context, higher educational attainment, higher cognitive level of one’s occupation, and more engaging in stimulating leisure activities have been found to be associated with better cognitive functioning in old age. Yet, the detailed pattern of the potential interplay of such a cognitively engaged lifestyle with personality dimensions, such as openness to experience, in their relations to cognitive functioning remains unclear.

Methods: Two thousand eight hundred and twelve older adults served as sample for the present study. Psychometric tests on verbal abilities and processing speed were administered. In addition, individuals were retrospectively interviewed on their educational attainment, occupation, and regarding 18 leisure activities that had been carried out in mid-life. Moreover, openness to experience was assessed.

Results: We found that the effect of openness to experience on cognitive functioning was mediated by educational attainment, cognitive level of job, and engaging in different leisure activities. Data were not better described by alternative moderation models testing for interactive (i.e., dependent) effects of openness to experience and cognitively stimulating engagement.

Conclusions: To explain interindividual differences in cognitive functioning in old age, present data are in line with a mechanism in which individuals with high openness to experience may have been more engaged in stimulating activities in early and mid-life. Possibly by increasing their cognitive reserve throughout adulthood, this may finally enhanced their cognitive performance level later in old age.

Purpose
Investigation of self-reported of low back pain (LBP) over the last month and associated health-related quality of life (HRQoL) in a sample of a community-dwelling population aged ≥65.

Methods
Cross-sectional study including older adults selected randomly from population records. Data were collected within a sample stratified by age and sex. Physical and psychological healths were investigated using a standardized definition of LBP and the EuroQoL-5D for HRQoL. Analyses were first conducted on the entire sample (N = 3042) and subsequently considering the subsample who reported LBP and a paired sample drawn from the pool of LBP-free respondents.

Results
889 (29 %) respondents reported LBP within the past month, present ‘most days’ or ‘every day’ in 52 % and limiting activities in the same proportion. Average pain score was 4.6 (SD 2.2; 0–10 scale). Age was associated with pain frequency and duration, with younger groups more often reporting pain ‘some days’ and ‘dating back <3 months’. Results of regression analyses showed that individuals suffering from LBP had significantly more problems than LBP non-sufferers on all EQ-5D subscales, except self-care: pain/discomfort (OR 5.33; 95 % CI [4.19–6.79]), mobility (OR 2.66; 95 % CI [2.04–3.46]), usual activities (OR 1.92; 95 % CI [1.42–2.60]), anxiety/depression (OR 1.59; 95 % CI [1.23–2.04]) and self-care (OR 1.29; 95 % CI [0.84–1.98]).

Conclusion
LBP appears to be a more permanent condition in the older groups. LBP may be a part of the definition of a subgroup of elderly at risk of becoming frail in relation with higher levels of functional limitations, psychological difficulties and social restrictions, hence globally impaired HRQoL.

ABSTRACT This paper focuses on older Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese migrants who spent their working lives in Switzerland and explores their different forms of geographical mobility between Switzerland and their home countries. Although drawing inspiration from the transnationalism literature and the new mobilities paradigm, we do not neglect a more structural perspective that stresses the constraints endured by older migrants when they try to build mobile lives. We approach the issue of transnational mobility using mainly quantitative data from the survey Vivre?Leben?Vivere, which focuses on the living conditions and health of individuals aged 65?years and above currently living in Switzerland. Within this survey, an oversample of approximately 300 older immigrants of Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese origin aged between 65 and 79?years was conducted in Geneva and Basel. The quantitative data are complemented by material from interviews with three Spanish families living in Geneva. Our data show that to ?settle in Switzerland? or to return home does not imply that older immigrants' transnational mobility ceases. To some extent, it could be argued that they never really ?settled? and transnational mobility is a way of life that is more adapted to the duality of resources and references that they have built up during their adult life. Their geographical mobility can take different forms and is adapted to legal constraints, to family configurations, and to individual situations. Copyright ? 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

It has been hypothesized that prolonged exposure to high cortisol levels results in cognitive impairment. However previous research into the relationship between cortisol and cognition has produced mixed results most likely due to difficulties achieving valid estimates of long-term cortisol exposure based on salivary or plasma cortisol assessments at a single time point. Furthermore there has been little research on the cognitive effects of long-term cortisol exposure in working-age adults. In the present study hair samples were collected from 246 nurses (89.8% female) aged from 21 to 62 (M = 42.0, SD = 11.2). Hair cortisol concentrations (HCC) in the proximal 3-cm hair segment were analyzed providing an estimate of integrated cortisol secretion over the 3 month-period prior to hair sampling. Cognition was measured using a battery of 15 neuropsychological tests measuring core dimensions of memory inductive reasoning processing speed crystalized intelligence and major aspects of executive functioning. HCC was not significantly related to any of the cognitive abilities measured either before or after controlling for potential moderators such as age sex education health well-being work ability and burnout. Tests for nonlinear relationships also yielded non-significant results. Thus despite the study being well powered long term cortisol exposure did not appear to be related to cognitive performance in this sample of working-age adults suggesting that long term cortisol exposure may be less relevant to cognition in younger and middle-aged adults than was previously thought.

Cet article souligne la qualité heuristique d’une double grille d’interprétation pour analyser l’activation et, plus généralement, les interventions du travail social dans les nouveaux dispositifs d’aide. Il vise à rendre explicite cette double grille de lecture intégrant autant l’agentivité des individus que les rapports sociaux qui les traversent, double grille qui se devine parfois implicitement dans les recherches. Pour ce faire, nous nous appuyons sur une étude en cours sur l’attribution d’aide financière des assistantes sociales et assistants sociaux aux personnes surendettées en Suisse romande, dans un contexte où les professionnel-le-s bénéficient d’une relative marge de manœuvre en termes d’attribution.

Social policies are described as active on the basis of formal legal provisions, or on the grounds of expenditure data. Using the notion, set forth by Lipsky, M. [(1980). Street-level bureaucracy: Dilemnas of the individual in public services (2010 ed.). New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation] as well as by several subsequent authors, that social workers who implement policies actually play a role in (re)defining them, the present article intends to explore the way in which active social policies are implemented in a Swiss canton. On the basis of an original study, we show that, on the one hand, social workers tend to view activation as a distant perspective – which means they often do no put it into practice right away. And activation, when social workers do deem it to be necessary, takes on different meanings depending on whether they are dealing with young people or with mothers. As a result, the actual meaning of the word activation varies – a fact that scholars who focused solely on formal/legal activation policies were not in a position to observe.

Ce bilan des recherches en démographie historique et histoire de la famille considère la vieillesse et le vieillissement. Il embrasse le temps long des représentations, des réalités socioéconomiques et de leurs interrelations. Il met en évidence des discours et des normes chargés d’ambivalence, des inscriptions idéologiques, des différenciations sociales. L’articulation des parcours et des phases de vie avec les dynamiques familiales est interrogée à partir de l’hypothèse de la dureté de la famille nucléaire. Le 19e siècle et la première moitié du 20e siècle forment une période complexe, entre continuités et ruptures. Les évolutions depuis 1945 sont impressionnantes, toujours ambivalentes, et bien mieux comprises grâce au regard historique.