Beiträge zur Gesundheitspsychologie - Pädagogische Hochschule ...

Affective well-being in elderly people: A new computerbased
ambulatory assessment approach in daily life
Michael Reicherts & Christian Maggiori
University of Fribourg/Switzerland
michael.reicherts@unifr.ch
Emotions, affective experiences and well-being are considered as important
indicators both for physical and psychological health or disorders. Affective patterns
are candidates for life span changes Thompson (1988), and in the last
decade more attention has been paid to the developmental course of emotion
from adulthood into old age (e.g., Carstensen & Charles, 2003 Lawton, 2001).
However, a number of questions on emotional experience and its links with
general quality of life (QoL), subjective health and loneliness, for example, remain
open.
The aim of this study is to investigate emotional/affective states of youngolds
(60-75 years old) using a new computer-based monitoring approach
(“Learning Affect Monitor” – LAM; Reicherts, Salamin, Maggiori & Pauls, 2005)
and the link with QoL’s dimensions and affective well-being. The LAM represents
an ambulatory self-monitoring system for daily assessment of affective
experiences, which combines a quantitative approach based on three basic dimensions
(valence, activation and intensity) with a more qualitative approach
according to basic emotions (a list of 30 descriptors of emotions). Physical wellbeing,
the actual activity and social context are also recorded through this timesampling
approach.
The study presents data of N = 72 young-olds, recorded using the LAM
during seven consecutive days, with 6 recordings per day. Participants also answered
a number of self-report questionnaires, e.g., on QoL, social integration
and loneliness, personality, alexithymia, emotional openness or depression,
assessed at the pre- and post-monitoring session. Reliability measures indicate
high reliability and user acceptance in the elderly users. We also compared
young-olds with adults to assess possible age differences in affective life.
Based on 2650 records, the parameters of the Learning Affect Monitor indicate
a well-preserved daily affective experience in young-olds: their affective
experiences are rather similar to those of adult subjects (control sample). However,
older people evaluated their affective daily life as being more positive than
adults. Results show also associations between affective valence and physical
symptoms, with loneliness, isolation, family relations or perceived autonomy.
Positive affective experiences in everyday life are positively correlated with psychological
and global quality of life, subjective health and satisfaction with life.
Implications of daily life, computer-based, monitoring data, and their use as
well-being indicators will be discussed.
Keywords:
Young olds, ambulatory assessment, QoL
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