close friends. For yearly church or religious services
attendance, we assigned a value of 0 to never, 1 to once, 2
to two, and 3 for three or more. Thus, the index score for
social functioning ranged from 0 to 7 with higher scores
representing better social functioning.
The emotional well-being score was also created using
two questions. The first question asked whether there was
anyone to provide emotional support. A value of 1 was
assigned for yes and a value of 0 for no. The second
question asked whether more emotional support had been
needed in the last year: an answer of no = 1 and a yes = 0.
The index score thus had a possible range of 0–2 with
higher scores, indicating better emotional well-being.