• Journal of Families and Better Life
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.1-12
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• 2002

This study was conducted to examine the relationship between socio-familial characteristics and health status in early stage of elderly life. In this study, a total of 252 Korean males and females aged 55 to 74 were interviewed to obtain information on various socio-familial characteristics such as age, gender, residence, marital status, education, religion, distance with children, household size, and living arrangements. They were also examined for self-perceived depression and diagnosed health problems. The analysis of the results show that marital status, gender, and living arrangement were major characteristics differentiating health status; widowed women living apart from their children are at lower level for most items of hea1th status such as emotional, circulatory, respiratory, digestive, and muscle and skeletal function. Based on this analysis, suggestions are made for efficient health management. First, widowed females living without children are encouraged to participate in regular health promotion programs in self-organized groups. Second, usual welfare service programs need to be segregated for each age group, so that relatively young elderly are not frustrated from being treated together with extremely frail older elderly. Third, low education group living in rural area are offered preventive medical services for muscular and skeletal related health problems.

• Research in Community and Public Health Nursing
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.385-396
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• 2003

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine the status of care-giving for the demented elderly and to find out the need of community in-house care services-day care services, short-term care services, home help services, and home care services. Method: It analyzed the data of 186 old people having dementia, and caregivers. Data were collected for five days, in September 2002. Results: The caregivers were mostly women and the burden for the care giving was high (87.5%). They used community care services, that is, day care services (26.5%), home care services (21.6%), home help services 00.8%), short-term care services (6.2%). Caregivers' age and education level were significant factors in the demand for day care services. Caregivers' education level was a statistically significant factor in the demand for short-term care services and home help services. Caregivers' age and education level were significant factors in the demand for home care services. Conclusions: It is necessary to expand the financial aid for the active implementation of daytime protection for dementia-patients under medical treatment at home and to promote patients' recovery. It is necessary to enhance home help services and home care services, and to establish many day care centers and short term care centers. Through this, it will prevent caregivers from becoming burnt out due to the burden of care giving.

• Journal of Family Resource Management and Policy Review
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.121-139
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• 2017

This study aimed to explore the moderating effect of social support resources on the life satisfaction and caregiving burden of family caregivers taking care of the elderly in long-term care services. The study participants were selected from among the family caregivers utilizing 30 home care centers in Seoul, Korea. Of the candidates who agreed to participate in the study, 250 caregivers who had supported the elderly at home for at least 6 months were selected. The data collected were analyzed using SPSS ver. 21.0. The study findings were as follows. First, the whole family caregivers' caregiving burden of family caregivers was found to be slightly higher than the median value. More specifically, the physical burden was the heaviest, followed by the family relationship burden, the social activity burden, the emotional burden, and the financial burden. Social support resources and life satisfaction were found to be a little bit higher than the median value. Second, the variables that statistically significantly increased life satisfaction, starting with the strongest effect, were a lower psycho emotional burden, greater informational support resources, a lower economical burden, greater emotional support, a younger caregiver age, a higher monthly income, and a shorter care period. Third, informational support resources were found to have a moderating effect on the relationship between the support burden and life satisfaction. The more the participants used the informational support resource subcategory of the social support resources, the narrower the life satisfaction decrease, even though the caregivers felt a support burden. Informational support resources appear to have a statistically significant buffering effect.

• Communications for Statistical Applications and Methods
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.423-440
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• 2010

The purpose of this paper is to prepare the department creation and the staff increase of education institution by forecasting the demand of health and welfare workers according to execution of the elderly's long-terms treatment insurance system in July, 2008. We estimated confirmors of the elderly's long-terms treatment and the demand of professional workers of health and welfare field due to the increase of care insurance users in facilities treatment organization, care at home service facilities, and family allowance facilities for 2010-2030. The numbers of social welfare professional worker are estimated as 16,624 workers in 2020 and 24,688 workers in 2030. The numbers of nurses are forecasted as 11.287 in 2020 and 16,624 in 2030, we expect that the increase of the demand be accelerated. The demand of necessary care probation worker is 44,824 in 2009, but we already trained over around 500,000 workers in 1,078 education institutions through one year in Aug. 31, 2009, which excesses over the numbers of workers demanded as much as 10 times.

• Journal of the Korean Home Economics Association
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• v.43 no.2
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• pp.127-142
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• 2005

The purpose of this study was to investigate the consciousness of dietitians who provide the basic data for the utilization of traditional food in school food service. The conclusions of this study are as follows. The rate of recognition and awareness of traditional Korean food as the pursuit of learning about socio-demographic was generally high, and was remarkable in the elderly dietitians who have worked for a long term. The way how they learned about traditional Korean food was through media, school education, books, and home education, in order. Also, the dietitians who are relatively older or have worked for a long term have pride in traditional food because it suited their taste and was our traditional food. However, it was difficult to provide the food to school food service because the cooking process is complex, and students don's prefer it. Accordingly, improvements of recipe with use of traditional Korean food in school food service are urgently required. The dietitians in Gwangju City in Jeonnam province felt the need to make a standard traditional Korean food recipe, and the demand was especially the strongest among dietitians who have worked from 6 to 10 years. They suggested that the standard recipe should be made by the Korean Dietetic Association, dietitians working at school, Ministry of Education & Human Resource Development, professors majoring in Food & Nutrition, and Ministry of Health & Welfare in order.

• Journal of Korean Home Economics Education Association
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.59-75
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• 2008

This study is designed to support the development and the teaching of revised curriculum of 2007 "Technology & Home Economics" by investigating the actual condition and the necessity of education for elderly housing education. Questionnaire survey was conducted with 488 high school students in Gyeongnam in 2008. The data analyzed by descriptive statistics, t-test, One-way ANOVA, Duncan's multiple range test by using SPSS 14 program. The results showed that most of the students were dissatisfied with their middle school education of elderly housing due to the lack of interesting and practical contents. Thus, various teaching-learning methods where student can experience and experiment is needed. Also, the students demanded more of factors of elderly housing, spacing plan, elderly welfare service and less of three-generation housing and senior housing in their elderly housing education. The needs of education contents differed among students depending on variables such as sex, graduated middle school, household income, dwelling space and length of residential years. Therefore, revised 2007 curriculum of "Technology & Home Economics" should include required contents in related chapters. Because there are significant differences among textbooks about elderly housing, further attention needs to be paid to the new textbooks in order to include education contents evenly. At the same time, teachers should organize their teaching contents considering the divergence of variables. The effect of elderly housing education will be maximized if the revised curriculum consists of more experimental activities such as elderly simulation in the local community.

• Human Ecology Research
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• v.51 no.3
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• pp.275-284
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• 2013

The purpose of this study is to provide useful insights into community-level support services for family caregivers in Korea by comparing them with the services in the United States. Similar to most developed countries, life expectancy has led to rapid population aging in Korea over the last several decades. However, despite increased social needs of long-term care for the elderly, many elderly Koreans are still dependent on their family for the long-term care. Yet, existing support programs for family caregivers are very limited. As a result, family caregivers often suffer from a lack of financial resources and emotional support. In this study, we comprehensively review the extensive literature, including relevant studies and documents of community-level support services for family caregivers of the elderly at home in Korea and the United States. One of the most important differences is that compared to Korea, diverse services based on the law of NFCSP to support the family caregivers, such as counseling, organization of support group, and educating have been available in the United States since 2000. Additionally, the legal definition of family caregivers in the United State is broader than that in Korea, where family caregivers are limited to those who are related by blood or marriage. Therefore, more caregivers are eligible for support programs and benefit from the programs in the United States. The findings of the study suggest that policy makers in Korea should legislate for diverse and comprehensive services for family caregivers. Further, it is necessary to define legal terms for family caregivers more broadly to extend beneficiaries of the programs.

• Journal of Families and Better Life
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• v.25 no.1 s.85
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• pp.127-144
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• 2007

This study was conducted for the purpose of analyzing volunteer workers' perceptions of and attitudes toward the behavior problems of the elderly residents after caring for the residents voluntarily at low-income nursing homes. Eleven male and female volunteers ranging from age 19 to 52 were asked how they felt about the elderly residents' behavior problems and what kind of behavioral problems they had experienced after doing volunteer works in the three chosen facilities. In particular, they were expected to explain what emotional changes they experienced during their volunteer service. In this study, it was observed that most of the elderly subjects experienced three categories of behavior problems: habitual, repetitious and unreasonable activities caused by the elderly residents' life span backgrounds, unexpected and/or abrupt behaviors resulting from gradual cognitive impairments, and physiological, awkward activities caused from gradual senility. The volunteers tend to believe that the elderly residents are naturally expected to act positively, since they have been provided with well- planned, regular care services such as bathing, counseling, activity programs, and religious guidances. On the other hand, some respondents stated that their experiences at the nursing homes caused them to form negative images of the elderly; they feel that the elderly are not helpful for giving advices on critical decisions, guiding and encouraging their daily lives, and offering any positive influences toward their own lives. Rather, they find themselves getting too much stressed as a result of their intimate contacts with demented or senile residents. Overall, in this study, it is proposed that education for confronting sudden abrupt behavior problems should be intensified more for female volunteers, since they tend to be more susceptible to emotional harassment resulting from the problem behaviors. It is also proposed that young volunteers who have not been systematically trained for confronting aggressive behaviors need to be separately assigned their roles in order to minimize the potential of confronting unseemly situations resulting from male residents whose mental health has deteriorated. Furthermore, it is also suggested that the combination of leisure-related activities for healthy residents and stressful intimate services for the frail residents be systematically planned and implanted for the volunteer program so that the volunteers can lessen the chances of suddenly finding themselves confronted with extremely abrupt agitations.

• Journal of the Korea Convergence Society
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• v.13 no.5
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• pp.357-363
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• 2022

South Korea faces elderly care crisis with both low fertility rate and rapid ageing rate. Long-term care insurance in 2008 has taken care burden from family to nation. However, few options, lack of tailored services, and unstable community care plan caused blankness of care in some areas. Especially, increasing dementia rate has become an emergent social issue. Welfare technology could be a useful alternative to fill out the gap between demand and supply. Using FGI method on two groups(high-risk dementia group and MCI group), intimacy, accessibility and preventive way of dementia with welfare technology are analysed in this paper. Despites of a few differences of dementia progress, interests towards technology are expressed. More suggestions using TV and normal telephone to improve daily independence are presented as well. Amongst MCI group, help-service for technology-use at ADS and linkage ways of in-home services are also suggested.

• Korean Journal of Community Nutrition
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.137-149
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• 2020

Objectives: This study explored the community food environmental factors affecting food purchasing using a qualitative research methodology for the elderly as well as the various food environments under their socioeconomic diversity. Methods: For the qualitative data collection, this study interviewed 20 elderly people aged 65 years or more, who participated in a public health program or lunch services operated by the senior welfare center in Seoul. Five dimensions, such as availability, physical accessibility, affordability, acceptability, and accommodation suggested in previous studies, were used to identify the community food environmental factors. Results: The elderly participants showed overall similarities to the concepts derived from existing studies on the five dimensions of food accessibility environment. In addition, other important food accessibility environmental factors that were not present in previous studies, such as acceptability for a product of domestic origin, delivery service to home, and small-packaged food sales, were derived. On the other hand, the concept of some subjects differed depending on the household income and specifically for the physical accessibility concept. This showed that the close distance factor from a grocery store at home might not apply to older adults in low-income households in Korea. Conclusions: This study found that five dimensions of the food environment suggested by previous studies could also be applied to vulnerable older adults in Korea. On the other hand, the socioeconomic characteristics of individuals and households would affect the perspectives of their local food environments differently. The findings of this study could help in the development of tools for evaluating the community food environment.