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ABSTRACT: Background
As people age, functional losses may limit the potential to get outside the home and participate in desired activities and community life. Coping with age-related losses has been reported to be important for psychological well-being. Hitherto is not known whether active use of coping strategies also helps maintain out-of-home mobility.Aims
We investigated how two coping strategies, tenacious goal pursuit (TGP; persistency in reaching one's goals) and flexible goal adjustment (FGA; adjusting one's goals to changed circumstances), are associated with life-space mobility and perceived autonomy in participation outdoors among community-dwelling older people.Methods
Participants (n?=?186) were aged 79-93 years. TGP and FGA were self-reported using separate scales. Perceived autonomy in participation was assessed with the Impact on Participation and Autonomy Outdoors-subscale, and life-space mobility with the Life-Space Assessment. Two-step cluster analysis was used to create data-driven coping profiles of TGP and FGA.Results
General linear model analyses showed that the profile including highly tenacious and flexible older people had the highest life-space mobility and perceived autonomy outdoors, whereas the profile including people with low TGP and low FGA showed the lowest scores. Depressive symptoms attenuated the associations.Conclusions
Active use of both TGP and FGA is favorable for out-of-home mobility and enables more active participation in society in later life.
SUBMITTER: Siltanen S
PROVIDER: S-EPMC6682663 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Sep
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
Aging clinical and experimental research 20181117 9
<h4>Background</h4>As people age, functional losses may limit the potential to get outside the home and participate in desired activities and community life. Coping with age-related losses has been reported to be important for psychological well-being. Hitherto is not known whether active use of coping strategies also helps maintain out-of-home mobility.<h4>Aims</h4>We investigated how two coping strategies, tenacious goal pursuit (TGP; persistency in reaching one's goals) and flexible goal adju ...[more]