2019 Volume 30 Issue 1 Pages 21-28
This study was made to clarify how the program, in which elderly women donated the local event foods to high school students, affected the psychosocial functions of elderly women.
The participants were 58 elderly women who lived in Hyogo Prefecture. They were divided into the experimental group of 19 people who took part in the cooking program and the control group of 39 people who did not take part in the cooking program. The experimental group of the elderly women took part in the cooking program twice and they worked with the high school students in each program. Questionnaire surveys were conducted with the experimental group and the control group before and after the cooking programs.
The questionnaire included the following items: Instrumental ADL; IADL, self-assessment for their health, short version of Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS), Type A behavior, participation in social activities, the frequency of meeting their friends, grandchildren or great-grandchildren, awareness of coexistence with local communities, frequency of going out, short version of Generativity scale, and their interest in local event foods and their spread.
Variations in each item of the questionnaire surveys before and after the cooking programs were compared between the experimental group and the control group using a two-way repeated measures analysis of variance.
The results showed that the score of the experimental group of their desire to take care of elderly persons who live alone on the item of awareness of coexistence with, local communities and the score of their desire to serve as a role model for a young person on the short version of the generativity scale significantly increased.
After the elderly women participated in the cooking programs, their awareness of coexistence with the local communities and consciousness of generativity increased. It suggests that the cooking programs to donate the local event foods is expected to raise the consciousness of the elderly women on generativity and awareness of the coexistence with local communities even if the program is over a short period of time.
