Effect Of Daily Activities On Successful Aging In Older Adults

Daily activity, as a concept with high ecological validity, can provide a glimpse into entire prospect of elder individual's life. Daily activities shape the content and structure of the person's entire life. People select the activities in which they will invest time and attention from an enormous variety of possible activities. Thus, the sum of choices reflects his or her motivation and personal goals. Daily activities also reflect the accumulation of differential opportunities and constrains throughout the life course. Therefore, the issue of activity engagement is among flashpoints in theories of aging, and leading an active life is considered a hallmark in the model of successful aging. But due to categorizations of activity have been conceptually uncertain, and because different research design and method have been used in different studies, there still exists large between-study variations. Especially in China, little attempt has been made to investigate daily activities and their effects on successful aging in a relatively systemic-wholistic way.Thus, the purposes of this dissertation are:(a) to provide a description of daily life of the elders in terms of engagement and diversity of activities, (b) to assess the effects of personal resources variables such as age, gender, marital status, socioeconomic status(SES), as well as personal life goals on daily activities, and (c) to explore the relationship between activity engagement and activity diversity and psychosocial functioning after controlling for age, gender and education variables. The results show:the personal resources are related to activity engagement and activity diversity; Activity engagement influence psychosocial functioning, however, different categories is significantly related to different aspects of psychosocial functioning which included life satisfaction, positive and negative affect, general self-efficacy, sense of generativity, and social support quality. Activity diversity directly influences psychosocial functioning and also has indirect effects, by creating sense of self-efficacy and social support.To be specific, the main results of this dissertation are as follows:1 Daily activity pattern in old ageBasically, for old people, time is spent in 15 activity categories. The distribution of top 4 activities are:personal entertainment (95.6%), housework (85.4%), communication with family members (83.7%), and social activity (80.5%)。Across all 15 activity categories, participants average about 6.47 different activities.2 Effect of personal resources variables on activity engagement and diversity(1) Significant effects of age were found on activity diversity which decreases with growing age. However, the elder group only shows lower engagement in housework, leisure activity, care-giving for elder generation, care-giving for younger generation, paid work and travel.(2) A relatively small gender gap was found. There is no difference on activity diversity between man and women. The results show that higher commitment of women to housework, formal and informal volunteering activities, in contrast, men are more involved into group entertainment activity.(3) With regard to marital status, group difference was noted. Married participants showed higher activity diversity and engage significantly more into housework, continuing education, care-giving, paid work and travel.(4) SES was significant associated with activity engagement and diversity. Participants with higher SES showed higher activity diversity and involvement into more productive and personal development activity, such as hobby, continuing education, and travel.(5) Personal goals had significant relationship with level of activity diversity and several specific activity categories. Participants involved more activities attached greater importance to autonomy, economic safety, personal achievement, and social contributions.3 Relationship of daily activity to psychosocial functioning in old age3.1 Two concepts were introduced and two scale were developed as psychosocial functioning indicators,(1) After an exploratory factor analysis and a structure model, findings indicated that sense of generativity consisted of three types-i.e. sense of creativity, sense of responsibility, and sense of giving.(2) After an exploratory factor analysis and a structure model, findings indicated that the social support consisted of three types-i.e. instrumental social support, emotional social support, and negative interaction.3.2 Effect of daily activity on psychosocial functioning(1) Except care-giving to the elders, the rest 14 activity categories were significantly related to different aspects of psychosocial functioning which included life satisfaction, positive and negative affect, general self-efficacy, sense of generativity, and social support quality after controlling for age, gender and education variance.(2) It is observed that activity diversity facilitated the specific indicators of psychosocial functioning, namely general self-efficacy, sense of giving, and emotional social support.(3) Path model suggested that activity diversity directly influenced psychosocial functioning and also had indirect effects, by creating sense of self-efficacy and social support.The researches in this dissertation provide a basic and wholistic picture of daily activities in old age for urban residents in shanghai, results from this work support the active theory of aging which advocated keeping active lifestyle is beneficial for old people, extend successful aging model by demonstrating that non-productive activities also facilitates psychosocial functioning, supplement socioemotional selectivity theory by proving that negative affect has no orientation function. These results can be helpful to set an appropriate mind-set about activities in old age, avoid damaging interests of the elder by the bias. These results can be used as reference to create more friendly activities environment, to provide more activities facilitation to old people. And the results also provide reference to daily activity counseling and intervention for the elders.