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Intrigued by a topic that few, if any, researchers have pursued, Jamila Bookwala, associate professor of psychology, received a grant from the Anthony Marchionne Foundation to study how individuals who have never married depend more on their personal resources – and less on social ones – for health and well-being.
Bookwala is currently preparing a manuscript on her results for publication. She presented her findings at the 58th Annual Scientific Meeting of the Gerontological Society of America last November in Orlando.
“I’ve been doing research on social relations and health for a while and there has been very little research on people who are long-time singles – individuals who have not married well into the adult age,” Bookwala explains. “When I was looking into some statistics, I saw that this would be a good group to compare and study extensively, because they are individuals who are defined as having less of a social base.”
Bookwala describes personal resources as the characteristics, attributes, and disposition that define an individual.
“It’s not about the social system they have, but the type of person they are,” she says. “For instance, personal mastery is considered a resource. The more you have, the better you are in every domain of life, whether it’s health, career, family, having a sense of control – you are in the driver’s seat. Having these resources, regardless of marital status, plays a role in your well-being.”
Her study examined the differences in the distribution of personal resources among never-married adults and their married counterparts. The research also compared the relative roles of personal and social resources in positive and negative affects on long-term singles versus married adults.
Bookwala studied 115 never-married and 1,486 married heterosexual adults over the age of 40 who participated in the National Survey of Midlife Development in the United States. She found that never-married participants were significantly younger and more likely to be of ethnic minority status than married adults.
The idea that her work could uncover new information in this area was the most compelling aspect of the project for Bookwala.
“What is interesting is not so much how never-married adults defer to personal resources, it’s how much they rely on them,” she explains. “Do they bank on them much more than people who have social resources that are much more readily available to them?”
Bookwala found that never-married adults reported fewer psychosocial resources, especially social resources, than married adults. Though the differences were small in magnitude, they were statistically significant. Never-married adults also reported poorer psychological well-being. Higher scores on social resources and personal mastery among the personal resources were associated with better psychological well-being, with the exception that greater self-sufficiency was related to more negative affect. The study also concluded that the role of social resources in the experience of negative affect does not vary across never-married and married adults, but the role of two personal resource variables (personal mastery and self-sufficiency) does vary across the two groups. Lower personal mastery appears to be more detrimental to the psychological well-being of never married than married adults, while greater self-sufficiency appears to protect the psychological well-being of never-married adults but to be detrimental to that of married adults.
Bookwala explains the potential impact of her findings on what researchers and psychologists know about long-term single adults.
“I think this is a group that historically has been neglected by the scientific community, because there is just so little information out there, so hopefully this will put some deserved lights on what life is like for never-married adults,” she says. “We have this bleak image that they are lonely, but this may show that they are really tougher individuals than we thought because they rely so much more on themselves.”
A member of the Lafayette faculty since 2001, Bookwala regularly includes Lafayette students in her research. She has worked with Brett Strouse ’05, a psychology and economics & business graduate, on how friends and family affect individual health; Marquis Scholar Meghan Sweeney ’05, a neuroscience graduate, on the role vitamin supplements play in preventing Alzheimer’s disease; and Joelle Sobin ’05, a psychology graduate, on an article that appeared in Psychology of Women Quarterly.
She is the recipient of multiple grants from both the American Psychological Association (APA) and Pennsylvania State University, and has earned awards from the APA, National Institute on Aging, University of Pittsburgh, and University of Bombay. She has shared her research through more than 50 journal articles and conference presentations.
In 2004, her research on how poor marriages can affect the health of aging adults was featured in USA Today. The article was picked up or summarized by newspapers such as The Washington Post, The Denver Post, The Arizona Republic, and The Seattle Times. Publications in Great Britain, Australia, and South Africa also reported on the research. In addition, ABC News Radio distributed an interview with Bookwala to more than 3,000 affiliate stations, and she was interviewed on the live radio program “A Touch of Grey,” which is broadcast on about 50 stations, including WOR in New York City.
In 2003, she received a grant from the Lindback Foundation to conduct research on the links among marital quality, depression, and ethnicity in older Americans. Also that year, she was among 15 scholars selected from a national pool of applicants to attend a prestigious Summer Research Training Institute funded by the National Institute on Aging at the College of St. Scholastica in Duluth, Minn.
She has been an ad hoc reviewer since 1995 for Health Psychology, Journal of Applied Social Psychology, Journal of Clinical Psychology, Journal of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences, Journal of Gerontology: Social Sciences, Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, Psychology and Aging, Psychology of Women Quarterly, Research on Aging, Sex Roles, and The Gerontologist.
Bookwala earned Ph.D. and master’s degrees in social psychology from University of Pittsburgh, a master’s degree in psychology from City University of New York, and a bachelor’s degree in psychology from University of Bombay.