Effect of Jacobson's Progressive Muscle Relaxation (JPMR) Technique on stress of elderly living in selected old age homes, Kolkata

Abstract

A quasi experimental time series research design was adopted to find out the effect of Jacobson's Progressive Muscle Relaxation (JPMR) technique on the stress of elderly living in selected old age homes, Kolkata with the objectives to assess the pre-test level of stress among elderly in both experimental and control group, to find out the effect of JPMR technique on level of stress in experimental group and to compare the effect of JPMR technique between experimental and control group. The conceptual framework was based on J. W. Kenny's Open System Model. The non-probability purposive sampling technique was used to select 60 elderly (30 in each experimental and control group). A semi structured interview schedule and Perceived Stress Questionnaire were used to collect the data. The study findings showed that most of the elderly in experimental group (46.67%) and control group (50%) experienced moderate level of stress. The findings also showed that the JPMR technique was effective in reducing stress in experimental group as evident from ‘t’ value of 10.77 [‘t'df (29) =3.66] at 0.001 level of significance. The JPMR technique was effective in reducing stress in experimental group than control group as evident from ‘t’ value of 2.21 [‘t’ df (58) =2.01] at 0.05 level of significance. This study has several implications in nursing education, practice, administration and research. The study was concluded with recommendations for conducting on larger samples for better generalization of the findings and a comparative study with different relaxation techniques used in stress management.