The purpose of this study was to classify the elderly based on the functional status of psychological, physical and social aspects. We performed cluster analysis for the data of 1,231 people aged from 65 to 84 years old. Analyzed measures were subjective well-being and depressive symptoms as indicators of psychological aspects, presence of disease and grip strength as indicators of physical aspects, social support and a scale of instrumental activities of daily living as indicators of social aspects. As a result, five groups emerged. One group had higher scores in all aspects. One group had lower scores in all aspects and another group had remarkably depressive symptoms in addition to lower scores. Consistency in the level of the scores was observed in these three groups. Dissociation of psychological and social aspect, and physical aspects was observed in the other two groups. The score of psychological well-being was higher not only in the group with higher scores in all aspects but also the group of individuals who had lower physical function.

  The purposes of present study were to check cross validity of the scale of orientation toward homes for the elderly and explain the orientation of the baby-boomer generation living in the local city. The questionnaire was mailed to the 2716 baby - boom generation residents and 797 were completed. From the results of multi-group analysis with the data used for developing the scale, the measurement invariance model was adopted and the cross validity was verified, Cronbach’s coefficient alpha was 0.603 ～ 0.818. Cluster analysis with scale-scores was used to classify the orientation type. We defined 5 orientation types, which were “independent and amenity oriented type”, “interaction-priority type”, “modest type”, “independent-priority type”, “interaction and amenity oriented type”. The group whose prospects for their living expenses in old age was under 100 thousand yen showed lowest scale-scores in all fields of measurement. On the whole, the subject group possessing social dominance tended to reveal high demand level for homes for the elderly.

  Our study aimed to examine the possibility of communication under which we could better understand bilingual elderly persons with dementia by attempting reminiscence as an activity using the native language. We conducted our conversations with 4 bilingual residents of a special nursing home for the elderly geared towards Korean residents of Japan. The subjects were all female, with an average age of 88 years old, and were experiencing moderate or severe dementia. We performed a comparative analysis of both their native language and Japanese conversations from the perspective of whether or not there were any differences in the details of the conversations or emotional responses during the conversations. We observed that even if an elderly person has severe dementia, there is some natural Code-Switching (CS) taking place if they are a bilingual speaker. In other words, it became clear that there was a latent remnant ability in the subjects to use the language of their native country based on the learning and experiences they had accumulated in the past. Also, when we utilized the ERiC scale to assess emotional response, we found that there was more expression of positive emotion in the speakers when they used their native language as opposed to when they used Japanese. Based on the above findings, we think that our utilization of reminiscence in native language conversations with bilingual elderly dementia persons (in this case, on first-generation Korean residents of Japan) can be considered as one effective method of offering psychological support.

  This study explored patterns of fall-over accidents among the elderly with records of lifesaving emergency teams based on homogeneity analysis. We used 224 cases of fall-over accidents in Tsuchiura city of 2005 for the analysis.

  The homogeneity analysis extracted two dimensions. The first dimension was related to the location of the accidents and the sex of cases, while the second dimension was correlated to levels and parts of damage. The plotted variables on the two dimensions revealed four patterns of fall-over accidents. The first pattern was outdoor accidents correlated to relatively active young-old (less than 65 years old) people or drunken males. The second pattern was indoor (contains the entrance and garden) accidents related to the old-old (more than 75 years old, less than 90 years old) or females with decline of muscular power, and moderate damage. The third pattern was serious damage from falls correlated to the oldest- old (more than 90 years old) and basic activities of daily living: going to the rest room and standing up. The fifth pattern was slight damage accidents with activities of sitting down or getting into bed.

  The purpose of this study was to explore the factors related to the design of advance planning for the decline of decision-making capacity among the frail elderly, employing quantitative data, and to describe the completion process of advance planning employing qualitative data. The data were obtained from the members of daytime-care service of 2 institutions situated in Tokyo metropolitan area. Face to face interviews applying questionnaires were conducted with 98 members, 91 members of whom were to be quantitatively analyzed. In another research, 5 members of different family structure were interviewed by semi-structured format, and data were qualitatively analyzed.

  Based on the results of quantitative study, it was found that (1) living alone and having fear of serious future decline were significant factors to promote advance planning, (2) advance planning for the future of frail elderly was not completed by self-determination, but was influenced by the intention of family. The results acquired from qualitative study indicated that the elderly who consider the high probability of decline of decision-making capacity, were able to make decisions about advance planning for the future through discussions with their family members.

  The purpose of this study was to determine the frequency of elderly people who are homebound and to identify the factors that are related to a homebound state. The definition of homebound was going out not more than once a week. Questionnaires were sent by mail to 10,000 randomly sampled elderly people (aged 65 years or over) living in an urban community. Data for the remaining 3,592 people were used for analysis, excluding those who had been certified as being eligible for support under the Long-term Care Insurance System.

  Results of analysis showed that 8.0% of those people (males 9.6% and females 6.8%) were homebound. Multiple logistic regression analysis revealed that a homebound state was associated with a low motor fitness scale and a low self-efficacy score for both males and females. For males, a homebound state was associated with staying in a Japanese-style room in the daytime and living in a house in which the bedroom and entrance to the house were on different floors. The percentage of homebound elderly people in this study is lower than in other studies. This difference might have been caused by sample bias in this study. These results showed that the home environment of Japanese-style rooms is associated with a homebound state only for males.

  The purpose of this study was to elucidate the regional characteristics related with older people being “Tojikomori”.

  The data used in this analysis were from the AGES (Aichi Gerontological Evaluation Study) Project, conducted by Nihon Fukushi University located in Aichi Prefecture, Japan. A self-administrated questionnaire was mailed to 34,374 persons aged 65 years and older who were not disabled in 2003, and 17,269 persons responded. A dependent variable in the analysis was the estimation rate of “Tojikomori”. In this study, a “Tojikomori” person was defined as a person going out not more than once a week. Independent variables were population density. Spearman correlation coefficients (two-tailed) were used to evaluate whether the estimation rate of “Tojikomori” was correlated with population density. To control individual level confounding factor, analysis was also carried out in subgroups stratified by age, equivalent income, years of education attainment. Low population density was correlated with higher rate of “Tojikomori” (Speaman r=－0.60, N=79, p<0.001). This study showed that regional characteristics were related with the rate of “Tojikomori”.

  The present study investigated functional capacity of the elderly to evaluate the policy and make basic data for “the special elderly at risk of needing care”. Subjects were 72512 participants of community-based health checkups in Fukushima Prefecture. Their evaluation of functional capacity followed a guideline developed by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare. Higher proportions of old-old elderly were in need of medical care, with a significant decline in functional capacity, and met the criteria of program of care compared with young-old elderly. Prevalence of “special elderly at risk of needing care” in our study was 2.66%, due in part to a high proportion of “healthy elderly” among the participants of community-based health checkups. Functional evaluation among non-participants among old-old elderly of health checkups should be considered.