Crossing the Gap: Older Adults Do Not Create Less Challenging Stepping Stone Configurations Than Young Adults
Despite the known health benefits of physical activity, the number of older adults exercising regularly remains low in many countries. There is a demand for public open space interventions that can safely train balance, muscular strength, and cardiovascular fitness. In this participatory design stud...
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| Published in: | Frontiers in psychology Vol. 11; p. 1657 |
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| Main Authors: | , , , |
| Format: | Journal Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Switzerland
Frontiers Media S.A
10-07-2020
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | Get full text |
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| Summary: | Despite the known health benefits of physical activity, the number of older adults exercising regularly remains low in many countries. There is a demand for public open space interventions that can safely train balance, muscular strength, and cardiovascular fitness. In this participatory design study, older adults and young adults were to create their own stepping stones configurations. We provided them with six stepping stones, and examined the gap widths that each group of participants created and how they used the configurations.
The created absolute gap distances by the older adults were smaller than those of the younger adults. Yet, the amount of challenge (in terms of the created gap widths relative to a person's estimated stepping capability) did not significantly differ between the young and older adults. Furthermore, both groups created non-standardized stepping stone configurations in which the number of different gap widths did not significantly differ between the young and older adults. Interestingly, while using their personalized design, older adults made significantly more gap crossings than younger adults over a given timespan. This finding tentatively suggests that personalized design invites physical activity in older adults.
The present study demonstrated that older adults are not more conservative in designing their own stepping stone configuration than young adults. Especially in light of the public health concern to increase physical activity in seniors, this is a promising outcome. However, field tests are needed to establish whether the older adults' stepping stones designs also invite physical activity in their daily environment. |
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| Bibliography: | ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23 This article was submitted to Movement Science and Sport Psychology, a section of the journal Frontiers in Psychology Edited by: Sergio Machado, Salgado de Oliveira University, Brazil These authors have contributed equally to this work Reviewed by: Beatrix Vereijken, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway; Rachel O. Coats, University of Leeds, United Kingdom |
| ISSN: | 1664-1078 1664-1078 |
| DOI: | 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01657 |