Daily Lives Of Older Adults Research Articles

Flow Experience in the Daily Lives of Older Adults: An Analysis of the Interaction between Flow, Individual Differences, Serious Leisure, Location, and Social Context

This study examined how serious leisure, individual differences, social context, and location contribute to older adults' experiences of flow - an intense psychological state - in their daily lives. The Experience Sampling Method was used with 19 older adults in a Midwestern city in the United States. Experience of flow was the outcome measure, and the data were analyzed using hierarchical linear modeling. Results indicated that location and employment status influenced the subjects' flow experience. Furthermore, the findings revealed that retirement was negatively related to experiencing flow, and there was a significant association between home and the flow experience. The results of this study enhance the understanding of flow experiences in the everyday lives of older adults.

Daily experience of serious leisure, flow and subjective well‐being of older adults

The purpose of this study was to investigate how serious leisure and flow contribute to subjective well‐being (SWB) in the daily lives of older adults. Twenty‐two older adults were recruited from a local aging agency in a midwestern city in the USA. Experience Sampling Method was used to collect data on the daily experiences of the older adults. Hierarchical Linear Modelling was used to predict levels of SWB from experience variables (i.e. serious leisure, flow) and individual difference variables (i.e. gender, retirement). One‐way analyses of variance, random coefficient, and intercepts and slopes‐as‐outcomes models were tested. Serious leisure was positively associated with positive affect (PA), and flow had a significant negative relationship with PA. The results of this study confirm previous findings that SWB is an important consequence of serious leisure in everyday life.

Places, social relations and activities in the everyday lives of older adults with psychiatric disabilities: an interview study

Knowledge about the daily life of older adults with psychiatric disabilities is extremely limited, especially from the standpoint of the individual. The overall aim of this study was to describe and analyze the ways in which older adults with a psychiatric disability experience places, social relations and activities in different arenas of their everyday lives. Twelve older adults (>55 years) with a psychiatric disability were interviewed either once or twice, using different interview techniques. The first interviews were semi-structured and the second were in-depth interviews guided by a site-map. The interview texts were analyzed using qualitative content analysis, proceeding from open to focused coding in several steps. Although the respondents spent most of their time in their own homes, some also spent a lot of time at day-care centers and other similar places. The amount of time spent in places in the public arena varied a great deal. The interviewees' experiences of the places, relationships and activities in their everyday lives can be related to aspects of freedom and coercion, internal and external structure, and relationships and support. The provision of a varied range of services and support in diverse settings in order to make these accessible to persons of different ages and needs is an important challenge for welfare politics.

The Impact of Age-Related Vision Loss

Age-related vision loss is a condition affecting the quality of life of an ever-increasing number of older adults. The purposes of this study were to describe the impact of age-related vision loss, identify the factors that influence adaptation, and describe the perceived problem areas in the daily lives of older adults. Twenty-two older adults with vision loss participated in four focus groups. Analysis of transcripts revealed that the main themes were the impact of vision loss, factors that aid adaptation, and participation in meaningful activities. Findings from the focus group study revealed the importance of considering participants' physical loss of vision in the context of their psychological, occupational, and social worlds. This study pointed to the importance of occupation in adaptation to age-related vision loss and yielded many recommendations that could be integrated into models of low vision rehabilitation. Future research is now required to evaluate the implementation of these recommendations and further develop evidence-based practice in this field.

The effects of the Columbia shuttle disaster on the daily lives of older adults: Findings from the VA Normative Aging Study

During 2002–2003 the VA Normative Aging Study conducted an eight-day diary survey of stressors and well-being. A sub-sample of 19 men and 13 women (mean age = 71.78) completed daily questionnaires before and after the Columbia shuttle exploded on 1st February 2003, presenting a unique look into peoples’ daily lives before and after a tragic event. Results indicated no significant changes in negative affect or physical symptoms, but people reported significant decreases in both positive affect and memory failures on days following the shuttle explosion. Implications of these findings and directions for future research are discussed.

Older Adults' Affect While Watching Television

Recent theory has explored the relationship between daily context and emotion. While suggesting individuals structure daily activities in search of a particular affect state, few attempts have been made to highlight the relationship between a specific activity and emotion. The current study is part of a larger project examining the daily lives of older adults in which the most common leisure pursuit was found to be television (Intrieri, Goodwin, & Papini, 1990). Present analyses explore affect while watching TV in comparison to other activities. Sixty-nine older adults (Mean age = 71.8) participated in a study of daily life utilizing Experience Sampling Methodology. Across a 7-day period, participants responded to 6 signals a day for 42 signals per person. In response to each signal, participants completed a questionnaire containing items related to activity and emotion. Analyses indicate participants exhibit less positive emotion while watching TV than when engaged in other activities (p< .001). Participants also endorsed less negative affect while watching TV than during other activities (though there were no statistically significant differences in negative affect while watching TV and negative affect during all other activities).

Contexts, functions, forms, and processes of collaborative everyday problem solving in older adulthood

The present paper reviews the extant literature on collaborative everyday problem solving in older adulthood and explicates the contexts, functions, forms, and processes of collaboration in daily life. In this review, we examine collaboration as it occurs in the daily lives of older adults in addition to the specified intelligence-like tasks more typical of the current literature. Drawing from multiple literatures that have examined collaboration, including sociocultural perspectives within child development, life-span cognition, educational psychology, and social psychology, we illuminate the changing contexts of collaboration across the life span and examine the role of potential collaborators, the multiplicity of forms and functions of collaboration, and the social processes that may facilitate or hinder collaborative performance.

Leisure States and “Flow” Experiences: Testing Perceived Freedom and Intrinsic Motivation Hypotheses

Csikszentmihalyi's flow construct has been suggested as a useful model for describing and operationalizing leisure experiences. Data collected during the daily lives of older adults with the Experience Sampling Method were used to determine if flow experiences are more prevalent in conditions predicted by various theorists to foster leisure states. As predicted, freely chosen activities were accompanied by experiences with higher levels of positive affect, potency, concentration, and lower levels of tension. Also personal skills were more often perceived to match the challenges provided by the freely chosen activities. Counter to expectation, freely chosen but extrinsically motivated activities produced the highest levels of intrinsically rewarding flow. These activities appeared to demand more effort, commitment and obligation than the freely chosen and intrinsically motivated activities some models describe as “pure leisure;” they could be considered a form of “serious leisure.” The pure leisure/flow experience discrepancy also suggests that flow may only operationalize one facet of leisure experiences.

Being alone versus being with people: disengagement in the daily experience of older adults.

This research investigates the quantity and quality of time alone or "solitude" in the daily lives of older adults. A sample of 92 retired adults carried electronic pagers for 1 week and filled out self-reports on their companionship and internal states in response to signals received at random times. Analysis of the 3,412 reports indicates that those who were unmarried and living alone spent a majority of their waking hours alone and experienced low affect and arousal when in this dominant part of their lives. For the married, solitude was also a major part of daily life, filling 40% of their time, but, although it was related with somewhat lower affect, it was also related with higher arousal. These results suggest that being alone is not a wholley negative experience for this age group, especially for those who have the regular companionship of a spouse.