The average human age is constantly rising. There is an increasing amount of older people who want to live a quality life even in old age. The purpose of this research is to discover the connection between quality of life and physical performance parameters in elderly. We were interested in whether older people with better physical performance parameters also have better quality of life and whether the quality of life improves after three months of exercise. The study included 14 elderly people over the age of 80, from vicinity of Trnovo and Črnuče in Ljubljana. Only 9 of them finished the research program. We started and finished the research with examining physical abilities and quality of life of participants. Physical performance parameters were measured with Senior Fitness Test (SFT) and quality of life was measured with Older People's Quality of Life Questionnaire (OPQOL-35). Because of dimming vision, problems with holding a pencil and poor understanding of questions, the questionnaire was transformed into a structured interview. Between the first and the second examination, the participants exercised under supervision for three months, two 60-minute sessions per week. The results were processed with Pearson correlation coefficient and paired sample t-test. The physical performance parameters and quality of life showed a medium linear correlation (r = 0.530), but the risk value (α = 0.142) was too high to generalize the data to the basic set. The value of paired sample t-test did not show statistically significant differences (t = 1.397; α = 0.200) between the results of quality of life before and after exercise. Results of our research show that physical performance parameters are not linked to quality of life and that quality of life doesn’t improve after 3 months of exercise. New and more extensive research is needed for further understanding.
|
