Journal of Aging Research were found to be age eligible. Thus, an eﬀective response rate has been estimated at 63.9% and nonresponders were very similar in terms of certain demographics (age, gender, and race) to ﬁnal participants. Also, no substantial diﬀerences in cognitive status were expected as the sampling strategy included suﬃcient participants from institutional settings. The Georgia Centenarian Study, Phase 3 investigated factors related to survival and functioning of centenarians. Further details on the study’s sampling, data collection, and design are provided by Poon and colleagues [21]. Thus, 158 cognitively intact, community-dwelling, or institutionalized near-centenarians and centenarians (98 years and older; average age was 99.82 years; range was from 98 to 109) were included in this study. Of the participants, 78.5% were female, 85% were White and 15% Black, and 85% were widowed, whereas only 6% were married. 2.2. Measures 2.2.1. Control Variables. Analyses controlled for participants’ sex, mental status, activities of daily living, education, and perceived economic status. For sex, males were coded “0” and females “1.” The Mini-Mental Status Examination (MMSE, [41]) was used to control for cognitive ability (mental sta- tus); higher scores indicated greater ability. Two commonly used subscales, instrumental activities of daily living (seven items), and physical activities of daily living (six items) were combined to create the self-care capacity assessment, activities of daily living (ADLs, [42]). An example of a question asked included “Can you do your housework?” and was scaled so that 2 = without help (can clean ﬂoors, etc.), 1 = with some help (can prepare some things but unable to cook full meals yourself), or 0 = are you completely unable to prepare any meals? Cronbach’s alpha for this measure was .88, and it was scaled so that higher scores indicated higher levels of self-care capacity. A single question from the OARS [42] “How well does the amount of money you have take care of your needs?” was used to assess the participant’s ﬁnancial situation (economic suﬃciency). This was scaled from 1 (poorly) to 3 (very well). 2.2.2. Dependent Variables. Research has validated a single- item measure of self-rated physical health as a summary assessment of overall health status, predictive of outcomes such as mortality, BMI, physical activity, and hospitalization among others [43–45]. DeSalvo and colleagues [46] com- pared the predictive accuracy of a single-item measure of general health with multi-item scales (e.g., mental compo- nent summary and physical component summary). They found the single item performed as well as the multi-item measures regarding validity and reliability, in addition to saving time and money over the use of longer instruments. We used an item from the OARS [42] physical health section asking “How would you rate your overall health at the present time?” Responses ranged from 0 (poor) to 3 (excellent). Similar to physical health, numerous studies have employed a global self-rating of mental health [47, 48]. We assessed self-reported mental health with an item from the OARS [42] asking “How would you rate your mental 3 or emotional health at the present time?” Responses ranged from 0 (poor) to 3 (excellent). 2.2.3. Predictor Variables. Two commonly used measures for assessing social relations among older adults were included in this study: The Social Provisions Scale (SPS, [49]) and social resources [42]. We employed a 12-item short form of the SPS, a functional assessment that asked questions such as “I have close relationships that provide me with a sense of emotional security and well-being” and “There is no one I can turn to for guidance.” Items were scaled from 1 (strongly disagree) to 4 (strongly agree); Cronbach’s alpha for the scale was .75. Higher scores reﬂected higher levels of social provisions. Social resources, a structural assessment of social relationships, was measured using one question from the OARS [42]. In particular, this question asked “How many times during the past week did you spend some time with someone who does not live with you; that is you went to see them or they came to visit you, or you went out to do things together?” Responses were coded 0 = not at all 1 = once 2 = 2–6 times and 3 = once a day or more. Based upon work previously conducted [16] with this measure and very old adults (i.e., centenarians), we selected a question tapping frequency of network contact because (a) physical limitations (e.g., hearing loss) common with very old adults [50, 51] often limit phone or other communication-only contacts and (b) reduction in network size due to mortality—by deﬁnition centenarians have outlived peers, spouses, and often children—limits the numbers of individuals in their network. In addition, due to constraints composed by socioemotional selectivity [23], we did not use questions from the social resources section of the OARS asking about the number of phone conversations or number of network members participants knew well enough to visit as very old adults have likely reduced the number of network contacts to the few most salient. Thus, we selected the question above to tap the amount or frequency of contact the participants had with network members in the past week to comprise our structural measure of social relations. 2.2.4. Mediating Variable. The NEO PI-R [34] is a widely used measure that captures participants’ impressions of their own personality along the Big Five personality dimensions. Self-eﬃcacy includes an individual’s belief in his/her own competence to successfully perform a particular action [31]. In the present study, the competence facet from conscien- tiousness was used because it taps the degree to which a respondent feels capable and eﬀective. Feeling well prepared to face life and its changes is typical of those who score high on this facet, and the facet is often highly correlated with self-esteem and internal locus of control [34]. Seven items comprised this facet and were scaled from 0 (disagree) to 2 (agree); Cronbach’s alpha for this facet was .70. Descriptive statistics for each of the study’s variables, by residential status, and one-way ANOVA’s comparing the means across residential status, are provided in Table 1. 2.3. Data Analytic Procedure. Because previous investiga- tions [16] revealed signiﬁcant diﬀerences in social resources