Evaluation of the Elderly Care Program for Seniors in Rural Areas

농촌노인을 위한 노-노 돌봄 교육프로그램의 평가

This study aimed to develop the elderly care program for seniors in rural areas and to evaluate its efficacy through pre- and post-tests. For them, this study carried out a total of 8 sessions that includes 4 aims, such as understanding rural elderly, volunteer activities, psychological help, and aids to daily living, on 36 persons over the age of 60 years in rural areas. The data was analyzed by paired t-test to 36 elderly. The results of the study are as follows. First, looking at changes in knowledge about aging, objective evaluation of knowledge showed significant differences (t=-2.22, p<.05), but evaluation of elderly's perception-change didn't show significant differences between before and after. Second, volunteer attitude didn't show significant differences between before and after, but after the training, 75% of them answered 'yes' to question that asked whether they'd like to participate in elderly's volunteer caring activity for other elderly within the town in the future, which gave us certain expectation that the attitude towards volunteer activities might change positively in the future. Third, objective evaluation of knowledge for psychological help didn't show significant differences between before and after. But elderly's subjective perception showed significant differences (t=-2.82, p<.01). Fourth, evaluating changes in knowledge for elderly's aiding daily life, both the objective evaluation and subjective evaluation didn't show significant differences between before and after. Fifth, satisfaction of the program showed high scores over 4 points: contents, education methods, education place, education time. The most helpful topics for them were counseling (27.8%) and dementia (27.8%), followed by elderly and aging (16.7%), elderly's residential environment (13.9%), elderly's dietary life (9.3%) and volunteer activities (5.6%).