The effect of physical activity promotion program on life satisfaction in the rural elderly

Today, there is great difference between the population aging of cities and villages in most societies. Villages have more aged population. As the age increases, the life satisfaction decreases slowly. Physical activities are one of the factors that influence on improving life satisfaction. The purpose of this study is to address the effect of promoting physical activity on the life satisfaction in rural elderly.
Material and

This quasi-experimental study was done in 2017. in this paper 64 rural elderly in Chalab and Changuleh villages in Ilam province were selected by non-randomized method and divided to case (n = 32) and control (n = 30) groups. Data collection tools were demographic information and LSI-Z life satisfaction questionnaires. The validity and reliability of questionnaire were measured. The promotion of physical activity program was carried out in four stages including assessment, planning, implementation and evaluation. Data were collected before intervention and 3 months later and then analyzed by SPSS 16 software.

Before intervention, there were no significant differences between case and control groups in terms of demographic characteristics (according to chi-square test results). In the case group, the results of paired t-test showed a significant difference (p 0.05) between the average of elderly’s life satisfaction before intervention (15.33) and after it (14.91).

Life satisfaction of elderlies who did the physical activity program (case group) has been increased than others who didn’t perform the physical activity program (control group). It is suggested that the native designed physical activity promotion program are used to improve the elderly’s life satisfaction in different regions of country.