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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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| Use of the global positioning system to measure the out-of-home mobility of older adults with differing cognitive functioning | | Author(s) | Noam Shoval, Hans-Werner Wahl, Gail Auslander |
| Journal title | Ageing and Society, vol 31, part 5, July 2011 |
| Pages | pp 849-869 |
| Source | http://www.journals.cambridge.org/aso |
| Keywords | Cognitive impairment ; Mobility ; Evaluation ; Assistive technology ; Israel. |
| Annotation | The assessment of outdoor mobility of cognitively impaired older adults relies mostly on the reports of family care-givers and institutional staff and used observational approaches. This study aimed to assess the usefulness of high-resolution data gathering using a global positioning system (GPS) device attached to 41 mildly cognitively impaired and healthy men and women aged 64-90 years in Tel Aviv, Israel. The participants were tracked for 28 consecutive days using a location kit that combined a GPS with radio frequency identification. The high-resolution spatial and temporal data enabled detailed analysis of the differences in the timing and distance of the participants' daily outdoor mobility patterns. It was found that the spatial range of the mobility of older people with cognitive impairment is severely restricted, with most out-of-home time spent in close proximity to their residences. Men were generally more mobile than women and younger participants generally spent more time out-of-home. Although this study was qualitative in nature, the authors concluded that GPS was an advanced research tool able to record mobility better compared with other available methods. (JL). |
| Accession Number | CPA-110721007 A |
| Classmark | E4: C4: 4C: M: 7H6 |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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