Citation

Pennathur A, Sivasubramaniam S, Rene Contreras L. Int. J. Ind. Ergonomics 2003; 31(1): 41-50.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2003, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

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Abstract

This paper reports results of a study conducted to investigate the effects of age and gender of Mexican American elderly on the level of difficulty in performing household tasks (meal preparation, grocery shopping, house cleaning, laundry), personal tasks (dressing, bathing, grooming), transfer tasks (getting in and out of bed, getting in and out of chairs, getting in and out of bathtub, using stairs), and management tasks (using telephone, accessing mail, operating door locks). A questionnaire based on the Activities of Daily Living scale was constructed and administered to 62 Mexican American elderly subjects (31 males and 31 females) in Senior Centers in the City of El Paso. Their ages ranged from 65 to 84 (mean age: 74 years, SD: 6.2 years). Subjects quantified their responses to individual tasks as being 1 (task almost impossible to perform), 2 (possible with help), and 3 (easy and possible without help). In addition to summary statistics on responses for various tasks, a logistic regression was performed with age (continuous variable) and gender, as predictor variables, and responses to individual questions as the categorical ordinal response variables. Results show that age and gender both have significant effects on daily living tasks involving significant reaching, twisting and bending of trunk. To determine appropriate age separation at which difficulty levels in performing activities of daily living change, a discriminant analysis (with age groups in 10 year ranges, 65-74 and 75-84, and age groups in 5 year ranges, 65-69, 70-74, 75-79, 80-84) was performed on the responses. All predictor variables were used in the analysis. Results show that a 10-year age marker is a better discriminator of difficulty levels than a 5-year age range. Accommodating age related changes in functional abilities, and increasing functional independence of older adults will entail significant design modifications to products, systems and environments for daily use and living.Relevance to industryIt is important for engineering designers, particularly, product designers, and engineers in the housing industry, to consider functional capabilities and limitations of elderly users when designing products of daily use, and daily living environments.