Summary: | 碩士 === 亞洲大學 === 健康管理研究所 === 94 === The effects of physical activities or exercise in maintaining or improving health and physical function of older people are known. As rapidly increasing the rate of older people and progressive lengthening life span, it is important to maintain or improve older people’s health and the abilities of ADL, self care by increasing older people to participate exercise. We need to understand the factors to regular exercise for community elderly to promote their participation. This study is to explore the factors influencing older people to participate regular exercise and the relationship between physical activity intervention and exercise behavior.
This study is based on the study of “ Successful aging for the Elderly in Taiwan: Intervention and Evaluation” in 2005-2006. The participants consisted of community-dwelling older people living in Miaoli city and aged 66 years of old. Miaoli City East District, Gongguan and Tongsiao Townships were the experimental communities, and Miaoli City West District, Jhuolan and Houlong Townships were the controlled communities. There were 45 older people participating the intervention program. After intervention, we invited 624 older people to join the survey and completed 538 interviews with completion rate of 86.2%. Regular exercise was defined as doing exercise at least 2 times per week and over 30 minutes per time.
The results of the study included (1) 25.5% participants joined regular exercise. (2) Bi-variate analysis showed the significant factors to regular exercise included age, educational level, ethnic groups, living area, health condition, physical function, the number of chronic diseases, pain, drinking, physical activity, exercise barrier, exercise cognition, social support related exercise, and participating physical activity intervention. Chronic diseases related regular exercise were rheumatoid arthritis or arthritis, stroke and respiratory disease; (3) By binary logistic regression analysis, we found that the elderly with higher BMI, lower EMI scores, lower exercise barrier level, higher social support level were more likely to participate regular exercise. The one living in the intervention areas and participating physical activity intervention was more likely to participate regular exercise than the one living in the intervention areas but without participating intervention.
In addition to advocate the benefits of regular exercise, introduction of the appropriate and easy exercise and reduction in the exercise barriers for the elderly are also important to encourage their regular exercise habit.
|