Examination of the functional fitness level adapted to the frail elderly of the light care level

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The object of this study was to examine the content validity for giving the functional fitness test for the aged over 60 years of age developed by the AAHPERD to the frail elderly persons. The functional fitness test used in this study was originally developed by AAHPERD(1989) and also revised by the long-term study using Japanese healthy elderly samples(Yaguchi, et. al.1998). The two test items consisting of the soda pop coordination test and the dynamic balance test were given to the frail elderly persons living in both their own homes and in the several nursing homes for the aged.These subjects were classified into from "the independent level" to both " the needing support level" and " the care gradel-2 estimated by the Japan care insurance system. The sample size was consisted of 75 elderly persons for the test validity study in 2006 and the 250 persons for the clinical adaptability study of the test items in 2007.The results were as follows.From the correlation matrix, the two tes … More t items of the soda pop coordination test and the dynamic balance test indicated statistically significant relationship with the other fitness test items consisting of the grip strength, the walking of 5 meters interval, the leg-muscle strength and the other health indices consisting of Barthel index for knowing the elderly physical ADL level and TMIG for the instrumental ADL level.The analyses of covariance for controlling for sex and age (ANACOVA) showed the significant intercorrelations among the the two functional fitness test items and the other fitness test items and other health indices.Consequently the two test items consisting of the soda pop coordination test and the dynamic balance test were confirmed to be useful test items for examining the functional fitness level of the frail elderly persons.The critical adaptability study was administered by using the sample consisting of 250 frail elderly persons.The analyses of covariance for controlling for sex and age showed the significant intercorrelations among the two functional fitness test items and the other fitness test items and the health indices. As the results the functional fitness levels which were classified into the four score levels by using semi-interquartile range(Q) indicated to be useful influencing factors toward the health indices. The performance of the card classification task which is a subtest item of the TRW dementia rating scale developed by Yonekura, et. al (2005) indicated significant intercorrelations with the two functional fitness test items because the working memory is contained in the performance process of both the soda pop coordination test and the dynamic balance test.The significance of giving the functional fitness test items to the frail elderly persons were confirmed from the results mentioned above. Less