Influence Of Diversity Of Daily Small-group Activities On Physical Symptoms In Older Adults

At present,as a disadvantaged group,the elderly's poor physical symptoms have been widely concerned by researchers,and many studies have emerged.However,for a long time,most researchers still focus on the impact of cognitive aging process,personal emotion regulation strategies and other aspects on the physical symptoms of the elderly.Few researches pay attention to the effect of the diversity of daily small group activities on the physical symptoms of the elderly,and try to explore the mechanism.Small group activity is one of the main activities that the elderly participate in after retirement.Some studies have supported that the diversity of daily small group activities can improve their subjective well-being and physical health to a certain extent,while others believe that such small group diversity may also damage their health due to the occupation of personal resources and energy consumption.Therefore,this paper attempted to use intensive longitudinal design,through diary tracking,to explore the different effects of the diversity of daily small group activities on the physical health of the elderly,and the internal mechanism.In this study,53 elderly subjects were recruited to investigate the diversity of daily small group activities(including inter-group diversity and intragroup diversity),group emotion,stress,and physical symptoms within 7 consecutive days,forming a total of 371 effective data points.Firstly,this study analyzed the descriptive statistics and correlations of diversity of small groups,group positive emotion,and physical symptoms,then zero model,multilevel structural equation model and multilevel linear model were verified.The results showed that in the individual level,the intragroup diversity of small group had a significant positive predictive effect on group positive emotion,and a significant negative predictive effect on the physical symptoms of the elderly,and group emotion also had a significant negative predictive effect on the physical symptoms,indicating that group positive emotion played a mediated role between the intragroup diversity of small group activities and physical symptoms.Secondly,the results also confirmed the moderating role of psychological stress between intragroup diversity and physical symptoms.To sum up,after retirement,compared with continuous participation in various kinds of small group activities,the elderly should pay more attention to the diversity of small group activities and the important role of daily stress on physical health.At the same time,the discovery of the mechanism also could provide a certain reference value for the future research on the diversity of small group activities of the elderly.