(WITHDRAWN) Role Diversity: The Impact of Older Adults' Social Input in Everyday Activity Engagement on Enjoyment, Meaningfulness and Psychosocial Wellbeing Using Ecological Momentary Assessment

Background and Purpose:

Older adults benefit from engagement in different types of activities (e.g., physical exercise, cognitive-stimulated activities, social activities, leisure activities) physically, psychologically and socially. Usually, older adults’ physical demands in activities (e.g., the quantity or variety of activities) was the focus, but the impact of their social input during activity engagement (e.g., role engagement, role diversity) on their psychosocial wellbeing is underestimated. Training interventions and formal care settings were common research contexts for exploring the impact of activity engagement on older adults by measuring some specific outcomes. The complexity of activity engagement among older adults in a naturalistic context (i.e., everyday life) and their subjective experience (e.g., enjoyment, meaningfulness) are not well studied. Aims of this study are (1) to describe role diversity as the social input in everyday activity engagement among older adults, and (2) to investigate the impact of role diversity on their enjoyment, meaningfulness and psychological wellbeing.

Methods:

A purposive sample of 362 community-dwelling older adults was recruited in Hong Kong. Data were collected using a cross-sectional survey and ecological momentary assessment by voice phone calls. Participants were called at random four time points throughout a day with 1.25-hour interval from morning to evening (9:00 am to 9:00 pm) continuously over seven days. Each of them was required to finish reporting the activities, enjoyment, and meaningfulness at least 23 of 28 time points in total (80%). Maximum three activities were recorded at each time point and the number of participated activities ranged from 0 to 252. Types of activated roles in everyday activity engagement were interviewed, and role diversity was computed by the number of self-reported activated roles divided by the number of participated activities. Subscales of the World Health Organization Quality of Life assessment-brief (WHOQOL-BREF) measured participants’ psychosocial wellbeing. Descriptive analysis was used to describe role diversity of older adults in everyday activity engagement, and multiple regression analysis tested the impact of role diversity on their enjoyment, meaningfulness and psychosocial wellbeing after controlling the variables of age, education, physical and mental states.

Results:

Role diversity of older adults in everyday activity engagement is low (mean of role diversity = 0.2, SD=0.07). Role diversity in everyday activity engagement predicts better psychological wellbeing (B=22.354, β= 0.127, p<.05) and social relationship (B=22.228, β= 0.117, p<.05); while the number of participated activities has no contribution to these two aspects. In addition, role diversity associated with their subjective experience positively in the aspects of enjoyment (B=0.521, β= 0.138, p<.05) and meaningfulness(B=0.623, β= 0.174, p<.01), and the number of activities merely contributed to the enjoyment ((B=0.006, β= 0.110, p<.05).

Conclusions and Implications:

Role diversity of older adults in activity participation positively associates with their enjoyment, meaningfulness and psychosocial wellbeing. Diversifying the roles in activity participation could be a potential direction for promoting activity engagement among older adults because the amount and variety of activity engagement may become physically challenging for older adults in the process of aging. Future research is suggested to investigate the predictive effect of role diversity on older adults’ health-related outcomes.