An intergenerational program based on psycho-motor activity promotes well-being and interaction between preschool children and older adults: results of a process and outcome evaluation study in Austria

Abstract

Background Limited evidence exists for intergenerational interventions to promote health and well-being in older adults and preschool children. We therefore aimed to evaluate the implementation, feasibility and outcome of an intergenerational health promotion program based on psycho-motor activity. Methods A multicenter mixed-methods study with preschool children and older adults as equivalent target-groups, and professionals and parents as additional informants was conducted in Austria. The study included a needs assessment, a pilot phase with a formative process evaluation and a subsequent rollout phase to evaluate the outcome and the adapted processes of the intervention program. To analyze the qualitative data, a modified form of the framework method was applied. Quantitative data were collected with a time-sampling method and were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistical procedures. Results One hundred ninety-six participants (93 older adults [54 to 96 years old, 83% female], 78 children [2 to 7 years old, 58% female], 13 professionals and 12 parents) from 16 institutions (eight kindergartens and eight geriatric facilities) were included in the study. The qualitative process evaluation revealed several aspects for improvement of the intervention program. Well-being as measured by observing spontaneous intergenerational contacts ( p < 0.001) and facial expressions (effect size r = 0.34; p < 0.001) showed a significant increase between the rollout baseline and follow-up assessments. Conclusions Professionals in geriatric institutions and kindergartens could facilitate interactions between members of the different generations by offering an intergenerational intervention program based on psycho-motor activities in the future. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1186/s12889-019-6572-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

The “Healthy Akame!” community – government – university collaboration for health: a community-based participatory mixed-method approach to address health issue in rural Japan

“…If community members do not actively look for health information, the newsletter will be left unseen, and the information will not be transferred to the target. Other forms of communication, such as intergenerational communication and social events, were described as highly desirable by the group discussion participants, and several previous studies have shown the benefits of intergenerational activity for expanding social networks and improving health and quality of life [61][62][63]. However, intergenerational activity was not considered very important by most of the community residents who responded to our questionnaire survey.…”

Spaces for Transitions in Intergenerational Childhood Experiences

“…Profile of Child Respondents: Age, Country, Kind of Setting While the data shows that the age range of children who participated in the reviewed articles were from two until 24 years of age, the most common age range was from six to 12 years old for both quantitative and qualitative methodologies. Three researches included two year-olds as their participants (Davis ., 2008;Cerruti, Shepley, & Oakland, 2016;Mosor et al, 2019) thoroughly mostly observations, although in Davis et al (2008), they were reported to have more participatory roles with their siblings and grandparents for exploring intergenerational play even though they live distances apart from each other through the Magic Box activity. On the other hand, the 24-year olds were clustered with the younger group than the older group for the Photovoice methodology (Pace & Gavel, 2018).…”

Intergenerational Relationships Between Preschool Children and the Elderly

“…Mirfina-Veitche,BrayeaWatsona(1997),Tama et al(2006, Beckera a Steinbacha (2012) či Stašové a Křišíkové (2014), výzkumům věnujícím se rozvoji mezigeneračních vztahů se věnovali např. Skropeta, Colvin a Sladen (2014), Mosor et al (2019) nebo Yasunaga et al (2016). Konkrétněnamezigeneračnívztahymezidětmipředškolníhověkuaseniory byli zaměřeni např.…”