• 한국노년학
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• v.39 no.4
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• pp.959-976
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• 2019

The purpose of this study was to understand socio-demographic factors related to older adults' participation patterns in lifelong education. For the purpose, this study used the raw data of 2017 Survey of the Living Conditions of the Elderly (SLCE) conducted by The Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs. From the data of 10,073 older adults, their lifelong education participation, participating program types, participating organizations, and participating frequency were analyzed by their sex, age, educational level, household income, the longest job status, and health status. This study found that female, age of 70-74 and 75-79, educational levels of high school and higher, the longest job status of regular employees and unpaid family workers, and decent health status of older adults more participated in lifelong education. According to lifelong education program types, significant differences were found between education groups of middle school/lower and groups of high school/higher and between 1, 2 quintile income groups and 3, 4, 5 quintile income groups. In relation to the participating organizations, groups of 70 years and older, middle school and higher education level, under 3 quintile income, and poor health tended to participate in lifelong education at the elderly welfare center, senior citizens, and elderly classrooms. In terms of participation frequency, high school and college/higher than 0 year of school education, and regular workers than unpaid family workers were more frequently participated in lifelong education. This study showed the inequality in lifelong education participation according to older adults' demographic characteristics; finally, this study suggested necessary policies and academic discussions for future older adults' lifelong education.

• 한국노년학
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• v.39 no.4
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• pp.801-824
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• 2019

As becoming an aging society, there is a rising interest on dementia. But Dementia prevention program, executed at the national level, is in insufficient state. In this study, to design and diffuse Dementia prevention program, this study conduct Cognition improvement program and evaluate cognitive function in aspects of Discrimination, Organization, Thinking, Memorizing, and Concentration capacity. So that this study try to investigate how this Cognition improvement program will affect in detail to cognitive function in senior people. This study designed Silver Cognition program for 5 aspects of cognitive function; Discrimination, Organization, Thinking, and Concentration capacity. And this studyrecruited experimental group with control group, and conducted the program to them for 3 months. At the start and the end of the program, this study evaluated their MMSE-DS score, Geriatric depression scale, Quality of life score, and cognitive function test score by survey. Finally, this study compared and analyzed these first and second score to find the effects of this program to cognitive function. As the results compared between first and second score of MMSE-DS test, Geriatric depression scale, Quality of life scale, and cognitive function test, Silver Cognition program has a significant effects to improve cognitive function, MMSE-DS score and Geriatric depression scale. As the results of the test on cognitive function in 5 aspects, cognitive function is more improved in the order of Memorizing, Thinking, Concentration, Discrimination, and Organization capacity. After the Silver Cognition program, Memorizing and Thinking capacity have most improvement. But aging of brain function is faster in these two capacity, so if more concentrated education is conducted for these two capacity, then it will bring better effects for prevention of dementia.

• 한국노년학
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• v.39 no.2
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• pp.261-284
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• 2019

This study examines the vocational adjustment experiences of elderly men who chose a creative occupation after retirement. The aims are to understand the related meanings and to provide specific empirical data on the elderly who hope to start a creative occupation. Five men aged 65 years or older who chose a creative occupation after retirement were enrolled in the study. Data were collected through in-depth interviews with the participants. The collected data were qualitatively analyzed, and a total of 7 categories, 25 subcategories, and 132 concepts were identified. The seven categories were "challenge led by a sense of freedom," "reflection of the need for 'fun,'" "difficulties and limitations felt by a non-expert," "concerns and effort to afford the increasing expenses," "joy for accomplishment," "ways to utilize my creativity," and "reward from increased social participation." The participants felt that adjusting to a creative occupation was a process by which their potential creativity was expressed. They felt the joy of working that they had not felt before, and the series of processes by which they overcame difficulties during work and increased their social participation were in line with the goals of creative aging. In order to help older adults in Korea to choose and adjust to creative occupations in their older adulthood, there is a need for creative-occupation-related education prior to retirement and for various policies and practical efforts that consider the change of social environment. Furthermore, our findings suggest that choosing a creative occupation after retirement is an effective measure for promoting successful aging among the elderly in Korea.

• 한국노년학
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• v.28 no.4
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• pp.1249-1264
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• 2008

Guilt feelings are dysfunctional feelings that the primary caregiver of the frail elder are apt to have and those feelings increase a burden of caring, while there is lack of empirical study on the effect of guilt feelings on caring behaviors. In light of this, this study lays its purpose on examining the effect of the primary caregivers' guilt feelings on their burden of caring and request behaviors for help with caring, paying attention to their guilt feelings in our society where Confucian values toward supporting the elderly have remained. The questionnaire survey was conducted for 220 primary caregivers caring frail elders over 60 years of age by visiting. As a tool for measuring guilt feelings, a self-designed measure for caregivers was used (${\alpha}=.949$), and factors of guilt feelings were classified into four namely, the factors of lack of self-control, lack of resources, burnout, and the normative factor As a result, the following findings were derived. First, it was revealed that the guilt feelings of caregivers as family members have a positive correlation with a feeling of burden of caring and the feeling of burden have even effects on the four factors of guilt feelings. Second, when primary caregivers request help with caring, they feel guilty toward cohabiting family members and neighbors, and also they show no guilt feelings when using day-care services for the elderly. Especially, guilt feeling factors affecting primary caregivers were found to be the normative factor to cohabiting family members, the factor of lack of resources to neighbors, and the factor of burnout to using day-care services for the elderly. This result tells that the dysfunctional feelings of primary caregivers namely guilt feelings arising when asking help with caring not only increase their burden of caring but also can cause difficulties in sharing the role of the caregiver. Accordingly for the mental health of caregivers, we should develop programs with which we could understand and cope with their guilt feelings.

• 한국노년학
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• v.37 no.1
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• pp.237-250
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• 2017

The purpose of this study is to analyze the effects of exercise program for prevention of falling on physical fitness, posture and fall prevention self-efficacy for elderly women. 30 females above the age of 65 were subjects for this study. Over an twelve week period, 14women in the experimental group performed exercise 2 times a week for 60 minutes per session. 16women in the control group didn't participate in the exercise program. The independent variable was a exercise program for prevention of falling. Dependent variables were physical fitness, posture and fall prevention self-efficacy. Prevention of falling exercise program is consisted of an elastic band using exercise and Korean dance movement exercise. Physical fitness consisted of grip strength, upper and lower body endurance, cardiovascular endurance, flexibility, balance, coordination. The posture was measured the static posture when standing, using a high-resolution camera, body style to automatically measure the distance and angle(M-zen, Korea). Posture was measured in both the coronal and sagittal plane via reference board. Fall prevention self-efficacy was measured via questionnaire using the Korea Falls Self-Efficacy Scale (FES-K). The physical fitness, posture and fall prevention self-efficacy were measured twice with pre and post exercise, and the difference between groups with Wilcox signed rank test, and the group-specific post verification was carried out with U-validated methods (Mann Whitney U test). Statistical significance level was verified by setting the p<.05. Lower body endurance, cardiovascular endurance, flexibility, balance and coordination significantly increased in the experimental group. The control group was no significant increase in physical fitness variables. shoulder slope angle, pelvic slope angle(coronal/sagittal), leg length difference, scapular inferior angle and left/right calcaneus angle significantly decreased in the experimental group. Both the experimental group and control group were no significant increase in fall prevention self efficacy. The prevention of falling exercise program for elderly women indicated the positive changes in physical fitness(except grip strength) and posture(except upper body slope). However, there are no significant differences of falling prevention self-efficacy between the both group. Thus, the prevention of falling exercise program for the elderly has been proved that it is highly efficient on improving physical fitness and posture proofreading. However, we still need to consider supplement exercise for grip strength and upper body slope.

• 한국노년학
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• v.38 no.4
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• pp.811-835
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• 2018

Social relations and cognitive function in old age are closely related to each other, and social relation is classified into structural characteristics and qualitative characteristics reflecting cognitive and emotional evaluation. The concept of social isolation is the focus of attention in relation to the social relations of old age. Social isolation has a multidimensional theoretical structure that is divided into objective dimension such as social network, type of furniture, social participation, and subjective dimension such as lack of perceived social support and loneliness. There is also a close relationship between cognitive function and interpersonal conflict in old age. In this study, we examined the effect of subjective social isolation, which shows the structural characteristics of social relations, and subjective social isolation and interpersonal conflict on the dementia occurrence by age group in the elderly. The data were analyzed by applying a random effect panel logit model using 1,740 panel data from the first year to the third year of KSHAP. The results of the analysis are summarized as follows. First, the cognitive impairment increased sharply with age. Objective and subjective social isolation were both U-shaped distribution with an inflection point of 80 years old. Second, the main effect on the probability of cognitive impairment was statistically significant with objective and subjective social isolation, but the type of interpersonal conflict did not appear to be significant. Third, the results of two-way interaction effect analysis on the probability of cognitive impairment are as follows. The relationship between subjective social isolation and the probability of occurrence of cognitive impairment was significantly different according to the level of conflict with spouse. In addition, the higher the subjective social isolation, the higher the probability of cognitive impairment in the elderly(over 85) than in the young-old(65~74). In addition, as the level of conflict with spouses increases, the probability of cognitive impairment of the oldest-old(aged 85 or older) is drastically lower than that of the young-old(aged 65~74). Based on the results of this study, policy and practical implications for reducing the cognitive impairment of the elderly age group were suggested, and limitations of the study and suggestions for future research were discussed.

• 한국노년학
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• v.38 no.4
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• pp.891-903
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• 2018

This study investigated the relation between frailty, social support, and health-related quality of life to provide basic data to improve the health-related quality of life of old-old elderly who are a high risk group for frailty. For this descriptive study, one-on-one interviews with structured questionnaires were conducted for elderly aged 75 years or older at elderly welfare facilities in K county from March 01 to 31 in 2016, and a total of 211 elderly were interviewed. The collected data were analyzed by t-test, Pearson's correlation coefficient, and path analysis using SPSS/WIN and AMOS 18.0 program. For the differences between the age groups, those aged over 80 years had a significantly higher frailty (t=-2.51, p=.013) and a lower health-related quality of life than those aged below 80 years (t=3.29, p=.001); however, there was no significant difference in social support (t=1.28, p=.201). The correlation between frailty, social support and health-related quality of life showed that as frailty became higher, social support (r=-.21, p=.003) and health-related quality of life (r=-.65, p<.001) were significantly lower, and health-related quality of life was significantly higher with a higher social support (r=.18, p=.010). As a result of investigating the mediating effects of frailty between social support and health-related quality of life, social support had a significant direct effect on frailty (${\beta}=-.21$, p=.016) and frailty had a significant direct effect on health-related quality of life (${\beta}=-.06$, p=.004); however, social support had no significant direct effect on health-related quality of life (${\beta}=.00$, p=.562). Social support had a significant indirect effect on health-related quality of life and a mediating effect on frailty (${\beta}=.01$, p=.012); therefore, the full mediation effect of frailty between social support and health-related quality of life was verified. Social support prevents frailty, and improving frailty enhances health-related quality of life. Therefore, it is necessary to develop a multifactorial frailty prevention program that includes age-specific social support strategies to improve the health-related quality of life in old-old elderly.

• 한국노년학
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• v.38 no.4
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• pp.1035-1055
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• 2018

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between public care and family care. Public care for older adults began in 2008 with the implementation of the Long-Term Care insurance in South Korea. Although the expansion of public care has the purpose of reducing the care burden for the family, it is not easy to say whether the developments of public care system reduce the amount of family care for older family members. Theoretically, public care and family care are expected to have various relationships depending on the degree of the role and function(substitution, hierarchical compensatory, task specific, supplementation, complementarity). And literatures have showed inconsistent results depending on the country, data, and methods. In this study, we analyzed the relationship between two care types focusing on home care services for older persons. Analyses were based on data from the second(2008) to sixth(2016) waves of Korean Longitudinal Study of Ageing(KLoSA). To investigate elderly care dynamics in the households, we pooled the data for four changes between two periods(2008-2010, 2010-2012, 2012-2014, and 2014-2016). This study used an analytic sample of 262 older adults, who are aged 55 over and experienced public care at least one point of time. We used Fixed-Effects(FE) model to analyze the differences within the same individuals under the condition that time-invariant unobserved factors are controlled. This study distinguished the cases of entry into public care and other cases of exiting public care. The results showed that older people who are dependent on public care are less dependent on family care than before. In both entry and exit groups, negative relations were maintained, but in the entering stage of public care, the degree of negative relations was relatively small, whereas in the stage of maintaining or departing from public care, relatively negative relations were strong. At the beginning periods, even though public care increased, family care did not decrease significantly. On the other hand, at the time of ending public care and relying on family care, family care increased significantly. The results of this study show that the relationship between public care and family care is close to hierarchical compensatory model and varies according to the stage of caring transition. Also, it was found that the cases of transition from public care to family care have the biggest burden of elderly care than other groups.

• 한국노년학
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• v.38 no.4
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• pp.1083-1105
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• 2018

The present study sought to capture day-to-day fluctuation of the daily happiness among Korean urban older adults and to examine whether the within person fluctuation of daily happiness is explained by the social and physical activities the older adults experience each day. We also examined whether the within person association between daily social, physical activities and the daily happiness varies by individual characteristics(i.e. gender, age, educational level and health). In addition, we explored the relationships between the level and fluctuation of daily happiness and the level of global happiness. The data was collected by multi-method approach, which includes general survey, daily diary method and collection of physical activity data through the activity monitors. In total, 175 urban older adults participated for seven days of daily diary survey. The data about the number of steps and the time spent on sedentary activities, light intensity physical activities and moderate to vigorous intensity physical activities were also collected during the same period from 16 sub-samples using activity monitors. Hierarchical linear modeling was applied for the analysis. The results were as below. First, the level of happiness of older adults fluctuated during a week, and the patterns of fluctuation varied by the gender and the health. Second, socializing with their children and friends elevated their levels of happiness. Also the impact of contacts with siblings on the level of daily happiness was greater for the unhealthy group compare to the healthy group. Third, older adults were happier on the days when they walked more, but the level of daily happiness decreased on the days when they spent longer time for low intensity physical activities. Lastly, the higher level of daily happiness were related to the higher level of global happiness, but the degree of fluctuation of daily happiness was not related to the level of global happiness. The implications of these results and suggestions for future research are discussed.

• 한국노년학
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• v.38 no.4
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• pp.1057-1081
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• 2018

This study analyzed the case of elderly care cluster in Gwangjin-gu to explore the possibilities of social economy as a provider of community-based social services. Community-based means the approach by which community organizations build a voluntary and collaborative network to enhance collective problem-solving abilities. Therefore, it is very likely that the social economy that emphasizes people, labor, community, and democratic principles can contribute to community-based social services. This study analyzed social economic network by using four characteristics of social economy suggested by OECD community economy and employment program as an analysis framework. The results of this study are as follows: First, it is found that social economy would hardly supply community-based social services through network cooperation because of a large variation in community identity, investment to new product, and labor protection. Second, community users are not the consumers of the social economy and the products of the social economy stay in market products only for the organizations in social economy. In order to create good services that meet the needs of residents, community development approaches are required at the same time. The importance of community space where local residents and social economy meet is derived. Third, public support such as purchasing support has weakened the ecosystem of social economy by making the distinction between public economy and social economy more obscure. On the other hand, public investment in community infrastructure is an indirect aid to social economy to communicate with residents and to promote good supply and consumption. In the end, community-based social services need a platform where the social economy and the people meet. This type of public investment can create the ecosystem of the social economy.