Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2006. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.Soc.Sc.)--University of Hong Kong, 1987. / Also available in print.

A população idosa está em crescimento no Brasil segundo dados do último Censo Demográfico do Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística - IBGE. Com esta perspectiva é importante atentar-se para o fato de que durante o processo de envelhecimento ocorrem diversas mudanças físicas e psíquicas que influenciam a pessoa no uso dos espaços e dos produtos. Dentre esses produtos, a cama é extremamente necessária durante toda a vida e a sua utilização faz parte da rotina diária, sendo alta a ocorrência de quedas de idosos no uso deste produto. Embora as lesões e as quedas na utilização das camas não estejam diretamente associadas à terceira idade, neste período da vida, elas podem representar um problema de saúde mais grave. A intenção desta dissertação é a proposição de diretrizes projetuais para que as camas sejam seguras e confortáveis para os idosos. Para alcançar este objetivo e compreender as necessidades dos idosos desenvolveramse duas etapas distintas: a fundamentação teórica e a pesquisa de campo. Na fundamentação teórica, foram levantados os assuntos relevantes a oito temas principais: idosos, mercado de camas e colchões, segurança, conforto, desenho universal, ergonomia, antropometria e usabilidade, com a finalidade de apontar direcionamentos de projeto indicados pelos autores. A pesquisa de campo, realizada em uma instituição de longa permanência e dezenove residências, totalizando cinquenta idosos, contou com o método de estudo de casos múltiplos através da aplicação de entrevistas semi-estruturadas entre idosos e profissionais. A aplicação deste método auxiliou a elaboração das diretrizes, pois, além de identificar as dificuldades encontradas pelos idosos na utilização da cama, permitiu a identificação dos elementos que são mais importantes e os que necessitam de melhoria na opinião dos usuários. As entrevistas com os profissionais que lidam com idosos diariamente também auxiliou neste processo. Assim, a partir da sistematização dos dados obtidos na fundamentação teórica e na pesquisa de campo, são apresentadas diretrizes projetuais que visam a segurança e ao conforto do idoso, que possui a sua autonomia preservada, na utilização da cama. / The old population is growing in Brazil according to last data from Demographic Census of Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística - IBGE. Based on this it is important to pay attention to the fact that during the aging process many physical and psychic changes happen which influence the person in the usage of spaces and products. Among these products the bed is extremely necessary during the whole life and its use is part of the daily routine, being high the incidence of falls of old people using this product. And although injuries and falls using beds are not directly related to the old population, during this period they can represent a grave health problem. The objective of this research is to propose project guidelines aiming that beds become safer and more comfortable for the old people. In order to reach this objective and understand the necessities of the old people two specific stages were established: the theoretical base and the field survey. In the theoretical base were raised issues related to eight main subjects: old people, the market of beds and mattresses, safety, comfort, universal design, ergonomics, anthropometry and usability, aiming to raise project guidelines indicated by the authors. The field survey, carried out in a long term stay institution and nineteen homes, totalizing fifty old people, counted with the multiple cases study method through the application of semi-structures interviews to old people and professionals. The application of this method helped the creation of the guidelines, since, besides identifying the difficulties found by the old people using the bed, allowed the identification of the most important elements and the ones which need enhancements in the users’ opinions. The interviews with the professionals which deal daily with old people also helped in this process. Because of this, based on the systematization of the data obtained in the theoretical base and in the field survey, project guidelines are presented aiming the safety and the comfort of the old people, who keep their autonomy preserved using the bed.

A população idosa está em crescimento no Brasil segundo dados do último Censo Demográfico do Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística - IBGE. Com esta perspectiva é importante atentar-se para o fato de que durante o processo de envelhecimento ocorrem diversas mudanças físicas e psíquicas que influenciam a pessoa no uso dos espaços e dos produtos. Dentre esses produtos, a cama é extremamente necessária durante toda a vida e a sua utilização faz parte da rotina diária, sendo alta a ocorrência de quedas de idosos no uso deste produto. Embora as lesões e as quedas na utilização das camas não estejam diretamente associadas à terceira idade, neste período da vida, elas podem representar um problema de saúde mais grave. A intenção desta dissertação é a proposição de diretrizes projetuais para que as camas sejam seguras e confortáveis para os idosos. Para alcançar este objetivo e compreender as necessidades dos idosos desenvolveramse duas etapas distintas: a fundamentação teórica e a pesquisa de campo. Na fundamentação teórica, foram levantados os assuntos relevantes a oito temas principais: idosos, mercado de camas e colchões, segurança, conforto, desenho universal, ergonomia, antropometria e usabilidade, com a finalidade de apontar direcionamentos de projeto indicados pelos autores. A pesquisa de campo, realizada em uma instituição de longa permanência e dezenove residências, totalizando cinquenta idosos, contou com o método de estudo de casos múltiplos através da aplicação de entrevistas semi-estruturadas entre idosos e profissionais. A aplicação deste método auxiliou a elaboração das diretrizes, pois, além de identificar as dificuldades encontradas pelos idosos na utilização da cama, permitiu a identificação dos elementos que são mais importantes e os que necessitam de melhoria na opinião dos usuários. As entrevistas com os profissionais que lidam com idosos diariamente também auxiliou neste processo. Assim, a partir da sistematização dos dados obtidos na fundamentação teórica e na pesquisa de campo, são apresentadas diretrizes projetuais que visam a segurança e ao conforto do idoso, que possui a sua autonomia preservada, na utilização da cama. / The old population is growing in Brazil according to last data from Demographic Census of Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística - IBGE. Based on this it is important to pay attention to the fact that during the aging process many physical and psychic changes happen which influence the person in the usage of spaces and products. Among these products the bed is extremely necessary during the whole life and its use is part of the daily routine, being high the incidence of falls of old people using this product. And although injuries and falls using beds are not directly related to the old population, during this period they can represent a grave health problem. The objective of this research is to propose project guidelines aiming that beds become safer and more comfortable for the old people. In order to reach this objective and understand the necessities of the old people two specific stages were established: the theoretical base and the field survey. In the theoretical base were raised issues related to eight main subjects: old people, the market of beds and mattresses, safety, comfort, universal design, ergonomics, anthropometry and usability, aiming to raise project guidelines indicated by the authors. The field survey, carried out in a long term stay institution and nineteen homes, totalizing fifty old people, counted with the multiple cases study method through the application of semi-structures interviews to old people and professionals. The application of this method helped the creation of the guidelines, since, besides identifying the difficulties found by the old people using the bed, allowed the identification of the most important elements and the ones which need enhancements in the users’ opinions. The interviews with the professionals which deal daily with old people also helped in this process. Because of this, based on the systematization of the data obtained in the theoretical base and in the field survey, project guidelines are presented aiming the safety and the comfort of the old people, who keep their autonomy preserved using the bed.

A população idosa está em crescimento no Brasil segundo dados do último Censo Demográfico do Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística - IBGE. Com esta perspectiva é importante atentar-se para o fato de que durante o processo de envelhecimento ocorrem diversas mudanças físicas e psíquicas que influenciam a pessoa no uso dos espaços e dos produtos. Dentre esses produtos, a cama é extremamente necessária durante toda a vida e a sua utilização faz parte da rotina diária, sendo alta a ocorrência de quedas de idosos no uso deste produto. Embora as lesões e as quedas na utilização das camas não estejam diretamente associadas à terceira idade, neste período da vida, elas podem representar um problema de saúde mais grave. A intenção desta dissertação é a proposição de diretrizes projetuais para que as camas sejam seguras e confortáveis para os idosos. Para alcançar este objetivo e compreender as necessidades dos idosos desenvolveramse duas etapas distintas: a fundamentação teórica e a pesquisa de campo. Na fundamentação teórica, foram levantados os assuntos relevantes a oito temas principais: idosos, mercado de camas e colchões, segurança, conforto, desenho universal, ergonomia, antropometria e usabilidade, com a finalidade de apontar direcionamentos de projeto indicados pelos autores. A pesquisa de campo, realizada em uma instituição de longa permanência e dezenove residências, totalizando cinquenta idosos, contou com o método de estudo de casos múltiplos através da aplicação de entrevistas semi-estruturadas entre idosos e profissionais. A aplicação deste método auxiliou a elaboração das diretrizes, pois, além de identificar as dificuldades encontradas pelos idosos na utilização da cama, permitiu a identificação dos elementos que são mais importantes e os que necessitam de melhoria na opinião dos usuários. As entrevistas com os profissionais que lidam com idosos diariamente também auxiliou neste processo. Assim, a partir da sistematização dos dados obtidos na fundamentação teórica e na pesquisa de campo, são apresentadas diretrizes projetuais que visam a segurança e ao conforto do idoso, que possui a sua autonomia preservada, na utilização da cama. / The old population is growing in Brazil according to last data from Demographic Census of Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística - IBGE. Based on this it is important to pay attention to the fact that during the aging process many physical and psychic changes happen which influence the person in the usage of spaces and products. Among these products the bed is extremely necessary during the whole life and its use is part of the daily routine, being high the incidence of falls of old people using this product. And although injuries and falls using beds are not directly related to the old population, during this period they can represent a grave health problem. The objective of this research is to propose project guidelines aiming that beds become safer and more comfortable for the old people. In order to reach this objective and understand the necessities of the old people two specific stages were established: the theoretical base and the field survey. In the theoretical base were raised issues related to eight main subjects: old people, the market of beds and mattresses, safety, comfort, universal design, ergonomics, anthropometry and usability, aiming to raise project guidelines indicated by the authors. The field survey, carried out in a long term stay institution and nineteen homes, totalizing fifty old people, counted with the multiple cases study method through the application of semi-structures interviews to old people and professionals. The application of this method helped the creation of the guidelines, since, besides identifying the difficulties found by the old people using the bed, allowed the identification of the most important elements and the ones which need enhancements in the users’ opinions. The interviews with the professionals which deal daily with old people also helped in this process. Because of this, based on the systematization of the data obtained in the theoretical base and in the field survey, project guidelines are presented aiming the safety and the comfort of the old people, who keep their autonomy preserved using the bed.

The thesis discusses the seniors living in their own homes. Specifically, it is the elderly who use social care services. Thanks to these services, some may remain in home care. The text of the thesis is divided into two parts. Theoretical and practical. In the theoretical part, the author describes concepts such as old age, quality of life, home, living in old age, social services and other essential concepts. The practical part contains the research, which was compiled from interviews with seniors. The aim of this thesis is to find contentment in the life of seniors living in their own homes who use social care services.

The older adult population in the United States is rapidly expanding both because of longer life expectancies as well as the aging of the baby boomers. While vision impairment is a growing concern among older adults, there have been few, mostly small studies, of the impact of vision impairment on this population. The present study uses a national data set, the Second Supplement on Aging (1994 -1996) from the National Health Interview Survey, in a cross-sectional study of 9,447 civilian non-institutionalized persons, aged 70 years and over at the time of their interview. The SOA II has been studied in the context of a social theory of aging that emphasizes interdependence through the life course using a stress process model that has been refined into a disability model. Disability is understood as a social construction outcome rather than as a medical outcome. Vision impairment is the stressor which is mediated by health (falls, functioning and self-health report), financial resources (education, income and having only public health insurance) and social support (marital, living along, having no living children, social activities in number and intensity). Depression is a possible, but not a necessary result of vision impairment. Disability may result when a medical pathology leads to an impairment which results in a functional limitation and finally a social disability. This secondary analysis used a multinomial logistic regression for both the whole sample as well as separately for each gender. For the whole sample the results indicate that a typical profile of a vision-impaired older adult depressed some/all of the time, would be a younger-old White woman (aged 70-74 years old) who has fallen in the past 12 months, has difficult with one or more Activities of Daily Living or with both one or more Activities of Daily Living and Instrumental Activities of Daily Living, has a poor to fair self-heath report, a family income under $20,000, a high school or less education, lives alone, has a living child and lacks social activities in number and intensity. In the gender samples, only the female sample at the some/all of the time depression category is significant. Older vision-impaired adults, especially older women who have more social supports are less likely to be depressed and so disabled. There is a need for social policies that will educate, encourage and support older vision-impaired adults as they seek to compensate for the loss of vision, often late in life.

No description available.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Dementia studies often collect multiple longitudinal neuropsychological measures in order to examine patients' decline across a number of cognitive domains. Dementia patients have shown considerable heterogeneities in individual trajectories of cognitive decline, with some patients showing rapid decline following diagnoses while others exhibiting slower decline or remain stable for several years. In the first part of this dissertation, a multivariate finite mixture latent trajectory model was proposed to identify longitudinal patterns of cognitive decline in multiple cognitive domains with multiple tests within each domain. The expectation-maximization (EM) algorithm was implemented for parameter estimation and posterior probabilities were estimated based on the model to predict latent class membership. Simulation studies demonstrated satisfactory performance of the proposed approach. In the second part, a simulation study was performed to compare the performance of information-based criteria on the selection of the number of latent classes. Commonly used model selection criteria including the Akaike information criterion (AIC), Bayesian information criterion (BIC), as well as consistent AIC (CAIC), sample adjusted BIC (SABIC) and the integrated classification likelihood criteria (ICLBIC) were included in the comparison. SABIC performed uniformly better in all simulation scenarios and hence was the preferred criterion for our proposed model. In the third part of the dissertation, the multivariate finite mixture latent trajectory model was extended to situations where the true latent class membership was known for a subset of patients. The proposed models were used to analyze data from the Uniform Data Set (UDS) collected from Alzheimer's Disease Centers across the country to identify various cognitive decline patterns among patients with dementia.

A review of the literature on adjustment to widowhood and survivorship reveals gaps in qualitative and quantitative studies which explore anticipatory processes for this expectable life event. Studies focusing on men anticipating this time of life are rare to non-existent. This is a qualitative study on the anticipatory processes (cognitive, emotional and behavioral) of individuals and couples. The theoretical underpinnings for the study are drawn from symbolic interactionist ideas of how individuals settle on a personal and functional reality and from the ideas of Peter Berger and his associates on how the marital conversation stabilizes the individual's sense of the world. Fourteen long-married couples ages 50 to 80 were interviewed. They are Caucasian, middle and upper-middle class people, married from 29 to 49 years. The first part of the study examines the following: whether people have a prediction relative to which of the couple will probably die first; whether members of the couple hold the same prediction; what factors inform such a prediction, and how much discussion there is of this topic. It was found that about one-half of the informants have a stable prediction and that three couples held the same view. Three typologies, the CLEARS, those IN PROCESS and the VAGUES, were used to describe the prediction behavior of the 28 participants. Among the seven factors highlighted were the sense of one's genetic inheritance, belief in the “common wisdom" that husbands pre-decease their wives, and observations of one's own energy level relative to one's partner. The second part of the study explores the worries and concerns of men and women as they look forward to a time without the life partner. The study uncovers the actions they take at present and actions they believe they would take in the future to best perform daily routines and to deal with emotional and relationship needs. It was found that the men and women envision their futures differently, that men anticipate the likelihood of remarriage and tend to see remarriage as a pleasant coping strategy. Women show a disinclination to remarry emphasizing the trade-offs of marriage. Their strategies are more varied, and are more likely to be based on observations of widowed women throughout their lives. Finally, the participants' religious and philosophical attitudes, broad enough to encompass death and loneliness, are noted. / Ph. D.