Mobile Application for Elderly Physical Activity Promotion

Abstract

The objective of this study was to explore the exercise conditions of the elderly in Maha Sarakham Municipality in order to develop a mobile application for the elderly physical activity promotion. It was conducted as an applied research comprising of 2 phases. In the phase 1, elderly exercises status was assessed among 216 samples of the elderly who were selected randomly. Data were collected by questionare, and descriptive statistic was used for data analysis. For the phase 2, a mobile application for the elderly physical activity promotion was developed using the results from the phase 1 in order to meet the requirements at a good level. As for the results, the samples in the phase 1 were predominantly female (57.9%) with the mean age of 68.4 years old (SD=5.62), primary education level (79.6%), married (83.7%). Majority of the were farmers (77.3%), and 81.1% had an underlying disease. They received exercise information from television (81.9%), and had good level of exercise knowledge with the average score of 8.02 (SD=1.31). Most samples xpressed that exercise was not necessary in everyday life and most of them did not have regular exercise. The average exercise score was equal to 1.5 (SD=0.30). For the 2nd phase, amobile application was developed and was found to meet the expectation at a good level (mean value was 3.92, SD=0.27), with proper function (mean value of 3.92, SD=0.25), and moderately easy to use (mean value of 3.25, SD=0.29). Thus, households and related agencies should promote more use of information technology for increasing physical activities among the elderly in order to improve their health.