• 한국노년학
• /
• v.39 no.3
• /
• pp.415-427
• /
• 2019

This study examined the effects of eating with others on depressive symptoms among the community-dwelling older adults by family arrangement, using the Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 7th (2016). A total of 1,233 older adults aged over 65 was included in this analysis. Eating status (alone / with others) and family arrangement (living alone / living with family) were dichotomized based on the original questionnaire. Among 955 older adults who live with family members, 855 persons (89.5%) eat together and 100 persons (10.5%) eat alone. Among 278 older adults who live alone, 86 persons (30.9%) eat together and 69 persons (69.1%) eat alone. Regression analysis controlling for demographic and health related factors, eating with others was significantly related to lower levels of depressive symptoms in the group of older adults who live with family members (β = -1.663, p <.001), while there is no statistical significance (β = -0.856, p = .148) in the counterpart. Therefore, various types of community-based programs need to be developed to encourage older adults to eat with other in their ordinary lives. It is also recommended that the community has to offer consistent care and support for the elderly particularly who live alone.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
• /
• v.15 no.11
• /
• pp.347-358
• /
• 2015

The purpose of this study is to verify if metropolitan area and non-metropolitan area have an influence on health of the elderly and estimate and compare the difference between the two areas. To achieve this purpose, the study was conducted on 4,714 elderly people aged 65 or more among source materials of "The 3rd Korean Longitudinal Study of Ageing in 2010" using OLS regression analysis and Oaxaca's decomposition method. Major results of the study are as follows. First, the elderly living in metropolitan area were found to have better health than the ones in non-metropolitan area(${\beta}=-.044$, p<.01). Second, in the result of looking into 'area' effect alone, which was decomposed to investigate actual effect of the difference between metropolitan area and non-metropolitan area, the elderly living in non-metropolitan area were found to have lower health status than the ones living in metropolitan area, confirming that the health gap among the elderly also originates from the characteristics of residential area(non metropolitan area-metropolitan area: 223.92, 109.50%; metropolitan area-non metropolitan area: -267.18, 130.66%). Through the results of the study, practical and policy implications and future study direction were suggested.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
• /
• v.13 no.3
• /
• pp.271-281
• /
• 2015

Using data from 2011 Elderly Living Condition Survey database, this study analyzed risk factors for suicide ideation of Korean elderly persons. The analysis sample consists of 10,003 cases. The main purpose of this research was to explore the effects of social quality factor on suicide ideation of Korean elderly persons. Analysis results show that gender, age, area of residence, living alone, subjective standard of living, activities of daily living(ADLs), and geriatric depression are significant predictors of suicide ideation. Key findings are that social quality factor such as experiencing feeling hurt from others' words and actions like avoiding conversations, disregarding one's opinions, pretending to be not heard, getting irritated, grumbling, etc. has the largest effects on suicide ideation. Analysis results imply that without improving social quality, it would not be possible to lower elderly suicide rate.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
• /
• v.18 no.8
• /
• pp.738-743
• /
• 2012

This paper describes analysis of long-term experiments on a monitoring system to assess the daily activities of the elderly who live alone. The developed system is composed of an in-house sensing system and a server system. The in-house sensing system installed in their own houses is a typical wireless sensor network system including three kinds of wireless sensors. The server system has a database server and an assessment server. We have installed the system into an elderly house, collected data during over two years continuously, then analyze the data. From the analysis, we could measure the energy consumption profile of three kinds of sensor nodes. The experiment shows all kinds of nodes can operate over one year with two AA-size alkaline batteries. Using a measure of reliability of the monitoring system called 'deadzone', the system has showed the failure operation for 842 hours (4.66 %) during over 18,000 hours total operation period.

• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
• /
• v.31 no.1
• /
• pp.139-167
• /
• 2009

A new public insurance for long-term care was introduced in July 2008 to provide for the rising demand for long-term care as the population is aging rapidly. The demand for long-term care is expected to rise further because more and more elderly are living alone or in households with only other elderly, such as his/her spouse, without informal care of their adult children. Even when the elderly are living together with their adult children, daughters and daughters in law, once the main informal care-givers, are not available because they choose to become economically active and work more over time. Experiences of countries such as Japan and Germany with similar public long-term care insurance scheme highlight the importance of detailed analysis on the demand for long-term care for the financial stability of the insurance scheme. Countries which had underestimated the demand for long-term care at the time of adopting the scheme went through financial instability of insurance schemes. This study analyzes the determinants of the demand for long-term care using data from the second demonstration project (April 2006~April 2007) of the long-term care insurance scheme for the elderly in Korea. Taking full advantage of detailed data on the long-term care, this paper analyzes the eligibility for the long-term care insurance scheme and its use. According to study results, even when common diseases among the elderly such as cancer, diabetes, arthritis, dementia, hypertension, etc. are controlled together with other individual and socioeconomic factors, limitations the elderly are faced with in their twelve activities of daily living significantly affect the eligibility for the Korean Long-term Care Insurance Scheme. This means that limitations in daily living activities are more critical than common diseases among the elderly are to the eligibility for the Korean Long-term Care Insurance Scheme. Bathing and toileting problems have been found to be the most important factor affecting the eligibility for the insurance scheme, followed by eating, dressing and moving around inside the house. Moreover, the choices of whether to use long-term care and which to use between home care and institutional care are found to be significantly influenced by health status and various socioeconomic factors of the elderly. In particular, those with more limitations in daily living activities and the female elderly are more likely to use long-term care and institutional care rather than home care. As for home care users, those living alone or with adult children and those with monthly household income of more than 500,000 won are more likely to use home care. Most importantly, even when the monthly household income of the elderly is controlled, the elderly recipients of the National Basic Living Security, who are not charged for long-term care, are more likely to choose home care. This implies that price as well as income is a critical factor for the decision to use long-term care. Further study on the duration of long-term care use will surely enhance the long-term care policy, when panel data is available for simultaneous analysis of the likelihood of long-term care use and its use duration.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Rural Architecture
• /
• v.13 no.4
• /
• pp.1-8
• /
• 2011

Korea is moving toward an aging society faster than the other advance countries such as the U.S. and France. Such aging phenomena are posing greater problems in rural areas than in urban areas, and particularly, decrease in productivity caused by aging population leads to economic difficulties and hinders the improvement of housing life. The purpose of this research is to examine and identify the housing conditions of the vulnerable in rural areas and to present ways to improve the elderly housing and the housing environment in rural areas and to provide basic data for materializing the policies to enhance the quality of life. The results of this research are as follows. First, the elderly in rural areas were found to receive relatively smooth supports for services related to clothing and food through the government and social organizations. But for the housing problems, it was found that there were not any supports. Second, the poor housing environment may cause diseases to the elderly with weak immunity, so ways to remedy these problems are urgently needed. Third, the vulnerable in rural areas can hardly bear the burden of improving the housing environment, so supports from the government and social organizations are needed. Fourth, ways to support the vulnerable such as households receiving basic living subsidies and to support the poor who are not receiving such subsidies should be explored.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
• /
• v.18 no.8
• /
• pp.343-351
• /
• 2020

The purpose of this study was to investigate social networks, loneliness, and sleep quality related to health-related quality of life in older adults living alone. Data were collected from 111 community-dwelling elderly. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, independent t-test, one-way ANOVA, Pearson's correlation coefficients, and multiple linear regressions with IBM SPSS 26.0 program. In multiple regression analysis, physical component summary (PCS) was predicted by the level of education (β=.20, p=.020), social networks (β=.31, p=.012), and sleep quality (β=-.23, p=.011). The model including these variables accounted for 25.7% of the variance in the PCS. Mental component summary (MCS) was predicted by loneliness (β=-.37, p=.004). Loneliness accounted for 31.7% of the variance in the MCS. In order to enhance the health-related quality of life of the older adults living alone, the intervention program to resolve social isolation should be provided for them.

• Journal of Korean Academy of Rural Health Nursing
• /
• v.18 no.2
• /
• pp.99-105
• /
• 2023

Purpose: This study aims to develop a shared forest walking program and verify its effects on self-esteem, life satisfaction, and depression among older adults living alone in rural communities. Methods: Participants were assigned to an experimental or a control group, with 20 participants each. Data collected during August 1~3, 2022, before the program, and October 29~31, 2022, after the program. In this study, the shared forest walking program was conducted twice a week for a total of 24 sessions, with each session lasting one hour. All data were analyzed using SPSS version 18.0, x² tests, and t-tests. Results: The experimental group participating in the sharing forest walking program showed higher self-esteem and life satisfaction than the control group, along with a decrease in depression. Additionally, there were statistically significant differences in self-esteem (t=5.97, p<.001), life satisfaction (t=7.78, p<.001), and depression (t=-7.58, p<.001). Conclusion: The shared forest walking program, developed based on the results of this study, improved self-esteem and; life satisfaction; and reduced depression among older adults living alone in rural communities. We propose the development of a continuous program to assist older adults living alone in underprivileged rural areas to experience retirement with reduced depression, increased self-esteem, and enhanced life satisfaction.

• Advances in Computational Design
• /
• v.4 no.2
• /
• pp.73-90
• /
• 2019

The growth in the number of single-member households is a critical issue worldwide, especially among the elderly. For those living alone, who may be unaware of their health status or routines that could improve their health, a continuous healthcare monitoring system could provide valuable feedback. Assessing the performance adequacy of activities of daily living (ADL) can serve as a measure of an individual's health status; previous research has focused on determining a person's daily activities and extracting the most frequently performed behavioral patterns using camera recordings or wearable sensing techniques. However, existing methods used to extract common patterns of an occupant's activities in the home fail to address the spatio-temporal dimensions of human activities simultaneously. Though multiple sequence alignment (MSA) offers some advantages - such as inherent containment of the spatio-temporal data in sequence format, and rapid identification of hidden patterns - MSA has rarely been used to extract in-home ADL routines. This research proposes a method to extract a household occupant's ADL routines from a cumulative spatio-temporal data log of occupancy collected using a non-intrusive method (i.e., a tomographic motion detection system). The findings from an occupant's 28-day spatio-temporal activity log demonstrate the capacity of the proposed approach to identify routine patterns of an occupant's daily activities and to reveal the order, duration, and frequency of routine activities. Routine ADL patterns identified from the proposed approach are expected to provide a basis for detecting/evaluating abrupt or gradual changes of an occupant's ADL patterns that result from a physical or mental disorder, and can offer valuable information for home automation applications by enabling the prediction of ADL patterns.

• 한국노년학
• /
• v.37 no.2
• /
• pp.293-308
• /
• 2017

This study aims to examine Life Managers for Elderly People Living Alone (LMEPLAs) in Seoul regarding their traumatic experience and the status of their posttraumatic stress disorder and also how they are coping with it in order to find out ways to improve it. As a study method, we investigated LMEPLAs in Seoul through a self-administered survey regarding whether they had faced any traumatic experience, types of their traumatic experience, diagnosis on posttraumatic stress, and the status of their coping with traumatic experience. According to the study results, 186 respondents (37.57%) have been found to indicate either partial or complete posttraumatic stress symptoms, but the status of their coping with it is very poor. The followings are the results of our discussion. First, it is needed to find out life managers suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder and build up a system to manage them consistently. Second, it is necessary to vitalize education about traumatic experience and posttraumatic stress management. Third, it is urgently needed to build up a system to support life managers who have faced any traumatic experience or been diagnosed to have posttraumatic stress disorder. Fourth, it is demanded to cultivate and arrange experts equipped with specialized knowledge and technique. Fifth, it is needed for them to build a network with medical institutes to receive a prompt diagnosis and specialized treatment.