The Feasibility of an Exergaming Program in Underserved Older African Americans

Abstract

The study tested the feasibility and efficacy of an exergaming program in underserved older African American communities. The study is a single-group with pre- and posttest design. Twelve female participants ( M age = 64.17 ± 6.74 years) completed an exergaming program once or twice a week for 24 sessions over 14 weeks. Community health workers implemented the program through coaching and supporting mechanisms to motivate participants to exercise. A mixed-methods analysis was used to assess the intervention. After the program, participants showed significant improvements in lower body flexibility ( p = .012), and physical health-related quality of life ( p = .005). Four themes were identified related to the self-reported benefits of the exergaming program: (a) improving health, (b) feeling enjoyment, (c) getting connected, and (d) knowing you. The exergaming program provides an easy-to-implement and potentially effective intervention that can be used in community-directed centers to improve health and well-being in the underserved population.

The Social Effects of Exergames on Older Adults: Systematic Review and Metric Analysis

“…Another study from Wu, Li, and Theng [ 45 ] also used a virtual bowling game, but from the Microsoft Kinect Sports game package. Two studies used exercise games from Nintendo Wii Fit, or its successor Nintendo Wii Fit U [ 21 , 38 ]. Wii Fit exergames are different to Wii Sports games as they aim to improve players’ physical fitness through exercise activities such as strength training, aerobics, yoga, and balance games.…”

“…Six studies included participants with Western cultural backgrounds, including the US, Australia, and Canada. Among the studies focused on Western cultural backgrounds, one study focused on African American participants [ 21 ]. Four studies were conducted in the context of Asia, all of which were conducted in Singapore.…”

“…Most of the citations of these two studies came from articles published between 2014 and 2016, and mainly from papers published in the fields of Medicine and Computer Science. Since the studies from Xu et al [ 22 ] and Chao et al [ 21 ] were only recently published (they were published in December 2016 and January 2017 respectively), no citations could yet be found for these articles. Figure 2 shows the bibliometric outreach of the exergame studies.…”

“…Agmon et al had a high count of 180 Mendeley readers, but since Altmetric.com does not include Mendeley readers in its score, this is not reflected as this study had a score of 3 [ 38 ]. Again, two recent studies [ 21 , 22 ] did not yet have any altmetrics, however, one tweet could already be found for the article from Chao et al [ 21 ], giving this article an Altmetric Attention Score of 0.5. Tweet counts were however low across all studies, with Milington [ 42 ] and Agmon et al [ 38 ] having the highest count of 5 tweets each.…”

“…Social interaction was reported as the most important motivation for adolescents in a 20-week exergaming intervention [ 20 ]. In addition to the positive effects experienced by the younger generations, recent research on exergames has also extended to investigate of the social effects of exergaming to the older population [ 21 , 22 ].…”