• Journal of Convergence for Information Technology
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• v.10 no.5
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• pp.177-187
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• 2020

The purpose of this study was to classify the care needs of the older adults aged 65 and over and to identify characteristics of care need groups. This was a secondary analysis study using data from 2017 National Survey of Older Persons in Seoul. There were 50.4% in the general group without any support needs, 17.9% in the medical needs group, 14.2% in the welfare needs group with support needs of daily living or social activity, and 17.5% in the complex needs group with both medical and welfare needs. Significant differences were shown in most variables of the general characteristics, grading of long-term care or disability, financial burden and caregiving, health behaviors, health status, and life satisfactions among groups (p<.001). The complex care need group should be provided with integrated care service for medical and welfare through multidisciplinary team approach.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare
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• v.39
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• pp.322-349
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• 1999

The purpose of the study is to investigate kinds of social support provided by various types of family members, relationships between types of family support and personal variables of the elderly and structural variables of the family network, and the relationships between family support and depression of the elderly. Here, family included a spouse, sons and daughters and their spouses, grandchildren, siblings and parents of an older person. Social support consisted of emotional, instrumental, financial help and social companionship. Two-hundred-eight older persons of age 60 years and over were interviewed. The main results of the study were as follows: an older person's spouse tended to provide more for emotional support, sons for financial help, daughters-in-law for instrumental support, and daughters for emotional and financial support. Some elderly were also provided for emotional support by parents and siblings. Possibility of daughters-in-laws and grandchildren as support providers was also verified. Various factors among personal and network-structural characteristics were significantly related to many types of social support provided by various types of family members. In general, while younger female elders, elders with good IADL ability or more frequent contacts with family members tended to have social support from more family members, support from daughters-in-law was provided to the elderly with less functional abilities. Various types of social support from a spouse were significantly related to depression level of the elderly. Their depression level was more related to whether or not sons and daughters-in-law exist rather than whether or not they provide social support. Practical methods to increase family support for the elderly were discussed.

• Journal of Computing Science and Engineering
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.40-50
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• 2012

Increase in the number of older people due to demographic changes poses great challenges to the social healthcare systems both in the Western and as well as in the Eastern countries. Support for older people by formal care givers leads to enormous temporal and personal efforts. Therefore, one of the most important goals is to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of today's care. This can be achieved by the use of assistive technologies. These technologies are able to increase the safety of patients or to reduce the time needed for tasks that do not relate to direct interaction between the care giver and the patient. Motivated by this goal, this contribution focuses on applications of acoustic technologies to support users and care givers in ambient assisted living (AAL) scenarios. Acoustic sensors are small, unobtrusive and can be added to already existing care or living environments easily. The information gathered by the acoustic sensors can be analyzed to calculate the position of the user by localization and the context by detection and classification of acoustic events in the captured acoustic signal. By doing this, possibly dangerous situations like falls, screams or an increased amount of coughs can be detected and appropriate actions can be initialized by an intelligent autonomous system for the acoustic monitoring of older persons. The proposed system is able to reduce the false alarm rate compared to other existing and commercially available approaches that basically rely only on the acoustic level. This is due to the fact that it explicitly distinguishes between the various acoustic events and provides information on the type of emergency that has taken place. Furthermore, the position of the acoustic event can be determined as contextual information by the system that uses only the acoustic signal. By this, the position of the user is known even if she or he does not wear a localization device such as a radio-frequency identification (RFID) tag.

• The Journal of the Convergence on Culture Technology
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• v.6 no.4
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• pp.371-377
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• 2020

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of satisfaction with green space on life satisfaction and to examine mediating effect of subjective health status in the relationship between satisfaction with green space and life satisfaction of older adults living in cities. For the purpose of the study, older adults aged over 65 years old who participated in 2018 Social Survey conducted by Statistics Korea were analyzed. A total of 4,567 older adults were analyzed using multiple regression analyses and significance of mediating effect was examined using bootstrapping method. Results of the analyses showed that satisfaction with green space had a significant effect on life satisfaction. Since a higher level of satisfaction with green space increased the level of life satisfaction, a direct effect of satisfaction with green space on life satisfaction was revealed. Also satisfaction with green space had a significant effect on subjective health status, so persons with a higher level of satisfaction with green space perceive their subjective health more positively. In regard to mediating effect, subjective health status partially mediated the relationship between satisfaction with green space and life satisfaction of the urban elderly. Results of this study show that green space can be used as an intervention method to improve health and life satisfaction of the urban elderly.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.35 no.4
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• pp.359-374
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• 2002

Objectives : To develop a physical functioning instrument for older adults living in the community. Methods : A representative sample of 979 people aged 65 years or over were interviewed in-person. Of these, 199 people also completed a detailed in-hospital examination. The scale items were selected based on the frequency of endorsement, along with the item-total and inter-item correlations. The associations of the scale with their physical performance and clinical examination were analyzed to evaluate the criterion-related validity. Construct validity was assessed using factor analysis, and internal consistency through Cronbach's alpha and item-total correlations. Test-retest reliability was measured by agreement between the household survey and the repeat survey at the in-hospital examination. Results : Initially, 23 items on the level of difficulty, ranging from no difficulty to an inability to complete a task, with the specific mobility and self-care tasks were included. Those with a high frequency of endorsement and a low inter-item or item-total correlations were excluded, resulting in a 10-item Physical Functioning (PT) scale. Equal weights were given to each item and a summated score was calculated. Significant associations were found between the PF scores and the physical performance, surrey and clinical data. The scale revealed a 2-factor (mobility and self-care) structure. Cronbach's alpha was 0.92 and the item-total correlations were in the 0.63 to 0.78 range. Pearson's correlations for the test-retest ranged between 0.56 and 0.61. Conclusions : The newly developed Physical Functioning (PF) scale showed good psychometric properties in older people. Further work, however, is needed to improve its sensitivity to discriminate higher levels of functioning, in addition to assessing its predictive value in detecting changes in health.

• 한국노년학
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• v.39 no.4
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• pp.781-800
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• 2019

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the association between residential environment satisfaction and elderly depression with a focus on the mediating effect of physical activity. The survey of Living Conditions and Welfare Needs of Korean Older Persons performed in 2017 was used for analysis. Among total 10,299 who aged 65 years or above and participated in survey, only 10,059 people who answered the survey questions by themselves without missing main questions were included in this analysis. Mediation effects were tested with Baron & Kenny(1986) method and Sobel test(Sobel, 1982). As results, first, residential environment satisfaction was negatively associated with elderly depression. Second, residential environment satisfaction was positively related to physical activity. Lastly, it was found that physical activity mediated the relationship between residential environment satisfaction and elderly depression. The results showed that older adults who satisfied in residential environment were more likely to participate in physical activity, and older people who participated in physical activity were less likely to experience depressive symptoms. Based on these results, the paper suggests the importance of subjective satisfaction of residential environment and participation of physical activity for mental health in later life, and some intervention strategies for Aging In Place.

• Journal of the Korea Safety Management & Science
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.7-16
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• 2013

As workplace incidents has been being declining in Korea, there is criticism of the effectiveness of occupational safety policy implementation. It is unknown that which policy target group needs to be targeted to yield effective injuries prevention. The purpose of this paper is to analyze and reveal the policy intervention group with a high priority in terms of industrial incident prevention and the related investment cost. A Policy Priority Model(PPM) is composed of 6 indicators regarding influences of both the incident reduction and the cost reduction. Z-score analyses are used to confirm the high policy priority area or policy target group. Overall, workplace with worker below 50 persons, construction site with the sales of more than a hundred million won, workplace with relatively small percentage of female employees and relatively higher percentage of older worker should be prioritized to reduce workplace injuries. This paper provides an analytic way that can be used to decide the policy priority workplace in order not only to reduce work-related injuries&illnesses and the related investment cost but to further lessen the related societal costs.

• Journal of Korean Academy of Fundamentals of Nursing
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.179-189
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• 2012

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to identify the effects of eating habits, activities of daily living and health behaviors on oral health related-quality of life in elders. Methods: The sample consisted of 246 people 65 years or older. Data were analyzed using frequency, percentage, average standard deviation, t-test, ANOVA, Scheff$\acute{e}$, Pearson Correlation Analysis and Hierarchical Multiple Regression. Results: The control variables such as gender, presence of a spouse, subjective health status, presence of chronic disease and existing number of teeth explained 14% (F=7.76, p<.001) of variance in oral health related-quality of life. The control variables, eating habits, activities of daily living and health behaviors collectively explained 20% of variance in oral health related quality of life. Conclusions: The factors that influence oral health related quality of life were presence of spouse presence factor, existing number of teeth and health behavior. Therefore, oral health related quality of life of elders requires the development of programs to boost the quality of life, and help the elderly people to maintain existing number of teeth by focusing on the variety of characteristics.

• Journal of Korean Academy of Nursing
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• v.41 no.3
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• pp.344-353
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• 2011

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to compare the quality of sleep with the serum lipid profile in patients who have restless legs syndrome (RLS). Methods: The data were obtained from 116 patients with RLS through questionnaires and blood sampling. Results: The results of this study showed correlations between lower quality of sleep and serum lipid profile (LDL Cholesterol) in patients with RLS (r=.19, p=.040). There were correlations for scores of quality of sleep from the, Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) sub-region between lower subjective sleep quality and serum lipid profile (LDL Cholesterol) (r=.20, p=.026), between fewer hours of sleep duration and serum lipid profile (Total Cholesterol) (r=-.21, p=.024), and, between higher daytime dysfunction and serum lipid profile (LDL Cholesterol) (r=.42, p<.001) of patients with RLS. Conclusion: Pati-ents with RLS have sleep disorders with lower quality of sleep and changes in the serum lipid profile for total cholesterol and LDL cholesterol. That is, patients with RLS have lower quality of sleep and dyslipidemia compared to persons without RLS. Further research is needed to monitor serum the lipid profile in early stage symptoms of midlife adult patients with RLS and especially older women.

• Journal of agricultural medicine and community health
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• v.32 no.1
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• pp.41-51
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• 2007

Objectives: The aim of this study was to evaluate the effects of exercise on the cardiovascular and musculoskeletal variables and quality of life in elderly women. Methods: The study subjects were 22 in experimental group and 21 in the control group, all of who were aged 65 years and over. The subjects in the experimental group were under an exercise program 3 times a week for one year. To assess the effects of exercise in the study group, blood pressure, heart rate, lipid profile, bony metabolism, grip strength, flexibility, reaction time, and quality of life were measured. Results: Exercise showed the significant differences between experimental and control groups on the variables of the diastolic blood pressure, HDL-cholesterol, urinary deoxypyridinoline, flexibility, and quality of life. Compared to before the exercise in the study group, the urinary DPD level and quality of life were significantly improved at 3 months, and diastolic blood pressure, serum HDL-cholesterol, and flexibility were significantly improved by 1 year. Conclusions: The study results underscore the efficacy of exercise and the need for regular exercise programs that are designed for older persons.