Development Strategy for Health Behavior of the Elderly

Abstract

The research objectives were 1) to examine the health problems of elderly people who resided in urban community around the
Development Strategy Practice Centre in Nakhon Sawan Municipality, 2) to construct development strategy of strategies for
enhancing health behaviour of the elderly people, and 3) to experiment the strategies with the target group of elderly people.
The research design was mixed methods of quantitative and qualitative approaches. The population comprises 897 elderly
peoples who live around the Centre. The purposive sampling was used for sample selection of 30 elderly who were voluntarily
assigned as an experimental group. The research tools used are a structured in-depth interview, a self-administered
questionnaire, participation observation, and a test of knowledge, skills and attitudes of health behavior. The findings revealed
that the elderly peoples suffered from the following problems: non-exercise, malnutrition, anxiety, and illness resulting from
afore mentioned. Therefore, the constructed development strategy for solving the health behavior problems of the elderly
people based on food, drinking water, fresh air, emotion, Thai massage, and music (singing, listening, and playing). The
instrument for data collection was a Likert-scale questionnaire. The finding revealed that 30 elderly peoples before training and
at the twelfth week about weight, body index, upper blood pressure, lower blood pressure, heart rate, waistline, and blood
sugar level were different with statistical significance at .001.