The frail older person does not exist: development of frailty profiles with latent class analysis

BMC Geriatrics

Table 1 Sample characteristics

	N (43,704)	%
Gender: Female	26,009	59.6
Living situation: Independently	38,321	89.6
Residential care setting or nursing home	4430	10.4
Marital status: Married/Cohabiting	21,368	49.8
Educational level Primary school or less	8639	22.7
Practical/secondary vocational training	22,913	60.2
Some college/university degree	6495	17.1
Ethnicity: Native Dutch	39,168	90.4
Self-reported health: Excellent	1533	3.8
Very good	3329	8.3
Good	17,150	42.7
Fair	15,379	38.3
Poor	2772	6.9
Self-reported health compared to 1 year ago: Much better	1030	2.6
Somewhat better	2488	6.2
About the same	21,639	54.1
Somewhat worse	11,487	28.7
Much worse	3370	8.4
Cognitive functioning:
No problems with memory, attention & thinking	25,784	66.4
Some problems	12,187	31.4
Severe problems	856	2.2
Social functioning have problems with social activities: None of the time	18,804	46.4
A little of the time	7581	18.7
Some of the time	7668	18.9
Mostly	3414	8.4
All of the time	3043	7.5
	Mean (SD)	Range
Age	78.74 (7.12)	60.0–102.80
Mental health (0–100)^a	73.69 (18.24)	0–100
Morbidity status (0–17 morbidities)^b	2.89 (2.02)	0–17
Functional limitations (0–15 limitations)^c	2.89 (3.30)	0–15
Frailty Index (0–1)^d	0.23 (0.14)	0.00–0.85

^aRAND Mental Health Subscale, higher scores represent better mental health;
^bSelf-reported number of morbidities, higher scores represent more morbidities;
^cModified Katz scale, higher scores represent more functional limitations;
^dFrailty index, higher scores represent higher level of frailty

ISSN: 1471-2318