Both in literature, in everyday life and during interviews of elderly people as part of the research Model for the aging of the elderly in the home environment in Slovenia, which took place at the Faculty of Social Sciences (University of Ljubljana) in cooperation with the Urban Institute of the Republic of Slovenia, I have noticed that health problems or the consequences of past health problems (e.g. an ,,
older people view the issue of caring for their health, whether they have opportunities for a healthy lifestyle, whether they can afford it, whether their environment is favourable and adapted to it, whether they are interested in paying attention to their health and in what way they might already be doing it. I want to find out an individual's assessment of health, the presence of diseases and health problems, assessment of factors that, in the respondents’ opinion, most affect their health. I am interested in whether they pay special attention to their health or whether their lifestyle influences important health factors; whether they expect some measures to be taken in the field of health or how they assess the need for measures, etc. The results of the research can contribute to systematic measures to prevent health conditions that cause an individual to become dependent on other people. They can contribute to a more appropriate, interest-based promotion of healthy living. They can help to create activities and support services that would take care of more effective preventive health care, to form a law on long-term care, where special care would be taken to reduce the number of individuals who would need long-term care services at all. The research I conducted is empirical, quantitative and descriptive. The measurement instrument used to collect empirical data is a structured survey questionnaire. The research population consists of persons aged 65 or more living in Slovenia in the period between 15 April 2019 and 15 January 2020. I selected the research units on the basis of non-random , convenience sampling and the sampling method is the snowball method. I obtained 209 completed questionnaires and 20.61% dropped out. I collected empirical data through surveys. I processed the collected data quantitatively, using the computer program Microsoft Excel and the statistical program IBM SPSS v. 21.0. with p <0.05 degree of characteristics. However, they were analysed by descriptive statistics, correlation and tests to test hypotheses with a hi-square test.
Respondents assess their health mostly as satisfactory, most often they are of the opinion that their health is affected by age. Respondents generally agree that their actions can affect their health condition. It turned out that the vast majority of respondents have a “healthy lifestyle”. They estimate that health services are easily accessible to them. Most often, respondents engage in physical activity twice a week on average, most often they do activities alone for up to 10 or 30 minutes. Most respondents have 1or 2 people available who they can turn to for help at any time. They most often expressed that they were "satisfied" with their lives. Among the respondents, most of them belong to the category of 65-74 years of age, most of them are middle-educated, and they are still struggling with their current income. They estimate that more financial resources would be needed for a healthier lifestyle. They want a healthier lifestyle and related activities to a certain extent.
Based on the results, I suggest several free or at least cheaper activities that would help to maintain health for the elderly. I also recommend other ideas such as spreading information about the possibility of implementing various activities and measures in the home environment, providing new ideas, promoting a healthy lifestyle, informing about ways to prevent risks of non-contagious diseases which are common mainly for older people or for reducing their symptoms, the involvement of media to spread positive evaluation of age, annual publication of brochures for individual areas with an overview of activities available to elderly people in their surroundings, personal planning, peer support, further research.
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