Abstract
The purpose of this study is in the investigation to relieve into the clothing inconvenience levels and to need by arthritis patients who experience clothing difficulties in daily living even without showing conspicuous physical disabilities. For this study, personal interviews were carried out with 151 female arthritis patients, using a questionnaire form consisting of a total of 206 items. Data analysis were done with spss 12.0 for the frequency analysis, cross tab analysis, t-test, and ANOVA. The findings are as follows. 1. The survey subjects were diverse in their age from 20s to 60s and 18.5% of them have need of other's assistance at the time of getting dressed or undressed of clothing. The knee part was felt to be the most uncomfortable, causing the inconveniences in wearing pants or panties. 2. The investigation into the inconvenience levels at the time of dressing or undressing of clothing was indicated that the wearing of pants was the hardest movement to arthritis patients, as the items relating to the movements for putting feet into or pulling them out of pants and those for raising pants over the hip were also accompanied by the feeling of pains. In addition, the aged arthritis patients felt the clothes-wearing movements more difficult. 3. The survey on the kind and inconvenience levels for the clothes currently being worn showed the highest wearing ratio for the pants, which were pointed out to be the most inconvenient. 4. As for the clothing improvement, the needs were located as a whole in the sufficiency in measures of pants crotch and circumference items, the flexibility in materials, the short length of pants, or the front clearance.
