Personal and behavioral determinants of active aging

Abstract

Introduction: the aging process is related to the multidimensional changes that converge on the involvement of disability and caring dependency, thus corroborating with the loss of independence in older people. Active aging emerges as a strategy to achieve the quality of life, being permeated and influenced by determinant factors such as personal and behavioral. Objective: measure the determinants factors personal and behavioral of active aging among the elderly. Methods: a descriptive and exploratory study with a quantitative approach, developed with assisted elderly in the Integral Care Center for Elderly Health in the city of João Pessoa, PB, Brazil. The sample consisted by 235 elderly. Data collection was conducted from October to December 2014, through interviews subsidized by a structured instrument covering related information to the proposed objective. Data were analyzed from the quantitative approach using descriptive statistics of unvaried nature for both variables, including frequency measures, from position and dispersion. To do this, was used the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences Computer System - SPSS version 20.0. Results: it was verified that the majority of the sample were female (68.1%) with a predominance of the age group from 60 to 69 (59.1%). As for the personal determinants was found the hypertension (28.4%), osteoporosis (20.4%) and arthritis (19.2%) as the most prevalent morbidities, in addition to the falls occurrence (41.5%) in the last twelve months. A high living satisfaction (44.7%), and leisure activities execution, such as watching television (38.5%), listening to the radio (26.3%) and reading newspapers or magazines (20.5%) was also observed. As regards to the behavioral determinants, it was found that most elderly had never smoked (54%), or consumed alcohol (90.2%), and made use of diet (28.8%) and healthy food (26.7%). However, most did not practice physical exercise (60%) and used one to two drugs per day (38.6%). Conclusion: it was verified the prevalence of personal and behavioral determinants more frequently among women and young adults, allowing thereby the expanding about active aging, as well as reflection, discussion and planning of actions and cares directed to this population.