The concern on political power of older people has been raised in the progress of aging of the electorate. However, it is not examined enough whether political age-group consciousness of older people closely related with political power of the old-age group is stronger than other generations or not. In this paper, I analyzed political age-group consciousness of older people through the comparison between three generations of young, middle and old using the data of 1,474 people obtained from the mail survey for 4,000 randomly selected adult men and women. As a result, it was revealed that the political age-group consciousness of older generation was lower than young and middle generations. And also it was revealed that gender and socioeconomic status as well as community characteristic does not influence the political age-group consciousness.

The present study investigated the effectiveness of a home-visit program on improving the self-efficacy toward going out in homebound elderly. Participants comprised 14 people whose frequency of going out was less than once a week. The program consisted of locomotion training instruction by home-visiting public health nurses and verbal support to set going out goals and improve self-efficacy toward going out. Including pre- and post-evaluations, the program comprised four visits and weekly telephone support. The intervention period was approximately two months followed by a three-month post-intervention evaluation. Significant increases were indicated in the Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Gerontology Index of Competence, self-efficacy of going out, and one-leg standing time with eyes open, with continuing effectiveness noted at follow-up. Moreover, homebound status was confirmed in one participant at the end of the intervention and two participants at follow-up. The present program suggested to improve self-efficacy and physical function of homebound elderly.

Background：The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of exercise intervention along with a focus on one’s life goals in elderly communities.

Method：The participants were 21 elderly people aged 65 and older, who were eligible to participate in the program. Elderly people who applied for the exercise training program with striving to achieve one’s life goals were assigned to the intervention group, and those who only applied for the exercise training program were assigned to the control group. We evaluated various functional performance measures as well as health related quality of life（HRQOL）at the beginning and end of the exercise training program.

Result：In the beginning, there were no significant differences between the two groups. While significant differences were shown in physical function and the Physical Component Summary of the HRQOL in the intervention group, differences were only seen in the chair stand test in the control group.

Conclusion：These results suggest that the exercise training program along with a focus on striving to achieve one’s life goals may provide benefits in the Physical Component Summary of the HRQOL in elderly communities.

Expressive writing is one of the alternative ways to manage stress. It consists in writing about one’s stressful event. Although expressive writing is expected to spread due to the low cost, no intervention studies have been conducted in older adults in Japan. The present study examined the effectiveness of expressive writing for healthy older Japanese as pilot study.

Participants were 129 community-dwelling older adults from an urban city Tokyo in Japan. In this paradigm of intervention group, participants were given a homework, which consisted in writing at home for 15 minutes each day for a total duration of 3 days. Participants in a control group were distributed to similar homework, but they wrote about the prices of their having bought commodities the day before.

We statistically analyzed 32 participants who accomplished homework [Intervention group: n=13; control group: n=19]. We measured the Negative Rumination Trait（NRT）as main outcome. The results showed that participants who had higher NRT scores at pre-test had lower NRT scores in expressive writing than their counterparts. This study implies that expressive writing is effective for improving rumination in healthy older Japanese who have a high negative rumination trait.