SOCIAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL BENEFITS OF EXPERIENCE CORPS PARTICIPATION

体验团（EC）代表了一种新的老年服务模式，旨在创造新的， 老年人的生产性作用，以解决公立小学未满足的需求，并提供一个 促进老年人健康的社会模式，旨在改善他们的社会/心理， 认知和身体功能结合EC拟议的5年随机试验， 老年人随机参加EC或其他志愿者机会，项目的主要目标 首先，测试老年人在社会和心理功能方面的假设更大的“收益”， 随机分配到干预[EC]组的成年人;第二，测试是否在社会和 心理功能介导了EC参与对认知和身体的假设益处 功能和健康状况。EC参与者的预期社会和心理收益明确得出 从EC计划的核心特征，其中包括在学校放置训练有素的志愿者团队（提供 一个临界质量的志愿者和促进集体“团队”效能感），让他们履行 有意义的角色，以满足学校的需要，需要承诺15小时/周，并提供激励 报销以抵消志愿者费用（例如，交通、饮食）。由于这些方案， 我们希望，加入欧共体将在这两个方面的重要方面带来收益。 老年人的社会和心理功能，包括更多的社会参与， 发展新的关系，增加有用性和价值感，更大的创造力， 自我效能和自尊。我们希望这些社会心理功能领域的进展将反过来 为老年志愿者的认知和身体功能带来益处。项目4的第二个目标 是测试EC计划对更广泛的学校社区的影响。具体来说，我们将测试 假设EC团队在小学的存在会导致更积极的发展， 学校社区中其他成年人对老龄化的态度和老年人的能力（例如， 教师，工作人员）。

The Experience Corps (EC) represents a new model of senior service, designed to create new, generative and productive roles for older adults to address unmet needs of public elementary schools, and to provide a social model for health promotion among older adults, aimed at improving their social/psychological, cognitive, and physical functioning. In conjunction with a proposed 5-year randomized trial of the EC, with older adults randomized to participate in the EC or other volunteer opportunities, the primary goals of Project 4 are to, first, test for hypothesized greater "gains" in social and psychological functioning among older adults randomized to the intervention [EC] arm; and second, test whether hypothesized benefits in social and psychological functioning mediate hypothesized benefits of EC participation for cognitive and physical functioning and health status. Expected social and psychological gains for EC participants derive explicitly from core features of the EC program which include placing trained teams of volunteers in schools (providing a critical mass of volunteers and promoting a sense of collective "team" efficacy), having them fulfill meaningful roles to meet school needs, requiring a commitment of 15hours/week and providing an incentive reimbursement to offset volunteer expenses (e.g., transportation, meals). As a result of these program features, we expect that participation in the EC will result in gains with respect to important aspects of both social and psychological functioning among the older adults, including greater social engagement and development of new relationships, increased feelings of usefulness and worth, greater sense of generativity, self-efficacy and self-esteem. We expect that gains in these domains of psychosocial functioning will in turn confer benefits for cognitive and physical functioning in older adult volunteers. A secondary goal of Project 4 is to test the impact of the EC program on the broader school community. Specifically, we will test that hypothesis that presence of the EC teams in elementary schools results in development of more positive attitudes toward aging and of older adults capabilities among other adults in the school community (e.g., teachers, staff).