Physical activity in Iranian older adults who experienced fall during the past 12 months

BMC Geriatrics

Research Article

Leili Salehi¹  Behjat Shokrvash²  Ensiyeh Jamshidi³  Ali Montazeri⁴ 

[1]Department of Health Education and Promotion, School of Public Health, Alborz University of Medical Sciences, Karaj, Iran

[2]Department of Health Education and Promotion, School of Public Health, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Tabriz, Iran

[3]Department of Health Education and Promotion, School of Public Health, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran

[4]Community Based Participatory Research Center, Iranian Institute for Reduction of High-Risk Behaviors, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran

[5]Mental Health Research Group, Health Metrics Research Center, Iranian Institute for Health Sciences Research, ACECR, Tehran, Iran

[6]Faculty of Humanity Sciences, University of Science & Culture, ACECR, Tehran, Iran

关键词: Physical Activity;    Elderly Center;    Daily Living Activity;    Physical Activity Scale;    Organization Physical Activity;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2318-14-115

 received in 2014-06-14, accepted in 2014-10-24,  发布年份 2014

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundPhysical activity may have several benefits for elderly people. However, the risk of falling might prevent this population from showing interest in physical activity. This research was aimed to explore facilitators and barriers to physical activity in older persons who have experienced at least one fall in the past 12 months.MethodsThis cross sectional study was conducted in 2010-2011, in Tehran, Iran. Using a multistage sampling method a group of elderly people entered into the study. A multi-section questionnaire was used to collect data on demographic information, physical activity level, and different determinants that might influence physical activity. Several statistical tests including linear regression were used to analyze the data.ResultsIn all, 180 old people from 40 elderly centers (49 men and 131 women) took part in the study. The mean age of participants was 65.9 ± 6.1 years. The result indicated that most participants experienced two or more falls during the last year (54.5%). Those who had more falls significantly scored lower on the Physical Activity Scale for Elderly (p < 0.0001). ‘Keeping in touch with friends’ was the most important advantage cited by participants for performing physical activity. The results obtained from linear regression analysis showed that ‘perceived benefits’ was the only significant factor that associated with physical activity (β = 1.03, p < 0.001).ConclusionThe findings suggest that perceived benefits could facilitate physical activity among elderly regardless of number of falls, self-reported health and daily living activities. However, we observed inverse association between number of falls and physical activity. Indeed the findings suggest that we should reinforce benefits exist when designing programs to increase physical activity among elderly population.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Salehi et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2014. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.