Affiliation: OHSU Public and Preventative Medicine
Funding Period: 2006 - 2007
Funding Source: Intel BAIC
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Abstract
The focus of maintaining home independence is currently centered around residential spaces and the activity occurring within the home. This is a narrow view. An active person in fact may not spend much time in home and as a result may skew the view of their activity levels simply because their major periods of activity are outside the home. In addition to instrumental activities of daily living, transportation and shopping, important components of higher-level function, such as exercise, dog walking, and socializing occur outside the home. A better understanding of these community-based behaviors of older adults would add to our understanding of aging, and eventually contribute to our ability to create interventions to keep older adults independent in their own communities. Real-time data capture and assessments of behavior in the natural environment are an important advance in health research to address limitations in existing methods of data collection and to add new information not available from existing methods.
Hypothesis/Aims
The purpose of this proposal is to establish real-time data capture techniques to monitor key specific activities conducted by older adults outside the home environment and relate them to both in-home function as well as the larger community context. We hypothesize that patterns of out-of-the-home activity are positively associated with patterns of in-home activity and that this relationship is moderated by the larger community context. The proposal builds on collaborative work with current ORCATECH researchers to conduct real-time data capture of older adults within the home setting. This proposed research will address 3 specific aims: (1)To test methods to collect data on activities conducted outside of the home; (2)To compare in-home and out of the home patterns of behavior; and (3)To evaluate the role of the larger neighborhood environment as a predictor of behavior patterns.