Exploring purpose‐designed audio‐visual falls prevention messages on older people's capability and motivation to prevent falls

Abstract

The number of falls and fall-associated injury rates among older people continues to rise worldwide. Increased efforts to influence older people's falls prevention behaviour are needed. A two-phase exploratory community-based participatory study was conducted in Western Australia. First, three prototype audio-visual (AV) falls prevention messages were designed collaboratively with six older people. Second, the messages' effect on community-dwelling older people's knowledge, awareness and motivation to take action regarding falls prevention was explored using focus groups.Data were analysed using thematic analysis to explore participants' responses to the messages. The participants' (n = 54) perspectives on the AV messages varied widely and stereotypes of ageing appeared to influence these. The presented falls facts (including falls epidemiology statistics) increased some participants' falls risk awareness and falls prevention knowledge. Other participants felt ready-to-use falls prevention information was lacking. Some expressed positive emotions or a personal connection to the messages and suggested the messages helped reduce ageing-related stigma.Strongly opposing viewpoints suggested that other participants identified implicit negative messages about ageing, which reduced their motivation with the messages.Suggestions to improve the message persuasiveness included adding more drama and tailoring messages to appeal to multiple age groups. Overall, the AV falls prevention messages designed in collaboration with older people elicited a divergent range of positive and negative perspectives from their peers, which was conceptualised by the overarching theme 'we all look at things different ways'. Opinions differed regarding whether the messages would appeal to older people. Public campaigns targeting falls prevention should be designed and tailored towards older peoples' differing perspectives about ageing. K E Y W O R D S accidental falls, community-based participatory research, consumer health information, health behaviour, qualitative research e472 | DE JONG Et al.

Evaluating audio-visual falls prevention messages with community-dwelling older people using a World Café forum approach

“…The results of this World Café forum should be viewed together with the results of a previous study [30] during which participants of focus groups offered their feedback on the same prototype AV messages. The overarching theme of that study (“ we all look at things different ways” ) echoed the participants’ wide variety in positive and negative opinions about the messages.…”

“…It was determined a-priori that items with a test-retest reliability below 0.5 would not be used. Forty-six study participants recruited during another study [30] completed these parts and once more (with the questions in the reverse order) after a 20-min morning tea. Agreement across the multiple-choice items between test and retest occasions ranged between 0.29 and 0.84.…”

“…To stimulate conversation between participants semi-structured, open-ended questions and prompts were used. The questions were informed by the experiences gained during focus groups [30]. Table facilitators collected the participants’ responses on large paper sheets.…”

“…The deductive approach was adopted for the data resulting from the conversations about the three AV messages. As responses about the AV messages had been identified in a prior study [30] a similar preliminary coding scheme was constructed. Four of six existing model components of this scheme (i.e.…”

“…As recommended in the literature [28, 29] community-dwelling older people’s perspectives regarding these prototype AV messages were subsequently explored using focus groups. The findings of this study [30] suggested that for some older people the messages had increased their falls prevention capability (i.e. falls risk awareness and falls prevention knowledge) and motivation to take up falls prevention strategies, but not for several others.…”