| Summary: | 碩士 === 慈濟大學 === 護理學系碩士班 === 99 === The purpose of the study was to explore the associations of basic demographic data, physical activity, activity participation, and health related quality of life (HQOL) and functional fitness.
Cross-sectional design was utilized and purposive sampling was used to recruit participants from the community care centers in Hualien. Interviewed was conducted to collect information regarding physical activity, activity participation, and health related quality of life. In addition, each participant was encour-aged to go through functional fitness test. Validated questionnaire including World Health Organization Quality of Life-Brief version(WHOQOL-BREF), Short Portable Mental State Questionnaire( SPMSQ), activity participation, Activities of Daily Living scale (ADLs), Instrumental Activities Of Daily Living scale(IADLs), and Classification system of physical activity level. Two hundred participants were re-cruited from eleven community care centers. The main findings from the current study include
1. Mean age of the participants is 76.4±6.1 years old. Most of them are widows or widowers (58.5%). Most of the participants finished at least elementary school. About two third of the participants (46.5%) reported at least one chronic disease. Near 75% of them are satisfied with their health status. About 60% of the participants reported exercise daily.
2. In terms of activity participation in community care center, the mean attended rate was 4.56±2 times per month. Most of participants (99.4%) visited care centers once months. As for the mean exercise program particitpation was 19.0±12.5 per month. Most of them exercise three to five times every week. Correlation analysis alsoindicated that total exerciseamong were positively correlatd with muscle strength of upper limbs(r=.327, p=.025).
3. In terms of functional fitness tests, women have higher performance of muscle strength of upper limbs, flexibility of upper and lower extremity, and agility than that of men. In addition. When com-pared with Chungli, the elderly who lived in Hualien had higher muscle strength of upper limbs, while they had lower cardiopulmonary function. Correlational analyses showed that the muscle strength of upper(r=.141, p=.047), lower limbs(r=.209, p=.003), flexibility of upper limbs (r=.162, p=.022), cardiopulmonary function (r=.255, p<.000), agility (r=-.179, p=.011) were significantly associated with the social relationships domain.
4. The mean score of the WHOQOL-BREF was 60.9, which indicated satisfactory level of quality of life. The physical health domain obtained the highest scores, while the psychological domain was the lowest. Correlational analyses showed that the total number of exercise was positively associated with all domains of WHOQOL-BREF. However, the relationship between the participation of the activity program and the WHOQOL-BREF were not reached a statistical significance.
According to the study results, more than 90 % of the elderly participated activity program regularly, but the activity participation was neither significantly correlated with the senior functional fitness tests nor with the WHOQOL-BREF. Possible explanation of this discrepancy might contribute to fixed service schedule of the community care center. Thus, elderly were not able to increase activity participation frequency, time spent on exercise due to limited open hours. As results, they might seek for alternative program and locations for exercise. It was suggested that future community care center should be sup-ported substantially by the government to increase the frequency and duration of the service in order to provide sufficient program for the elderly to achieve higher program efficacy.
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