Programmed Activity Attendance in Assisted Living: An Application of the Theory of Planned Behavior with Additional Health Factors

ABSTRACT

Objectives: Programmed activities contribute to the quality of life of assisted living (AL) residents, but attendance rates are often quite low. Using the theory of planned behavior (TPB), this study explores relationships among social cognitive variables, multidimensional health factors, and programmed activity attendance in AL.

Methods: In a cross-sectional survey, 185 AL residents (M_age = 83.64, SD = 9.64) self-reported physical and mental health; TPB constructs (i.e., attitudes, subjective norms, behavioral control, and behavioral intention); and the percentage of programmed activities attended in the previous week.

Results: Structural modeling showed that TPB was a good fit for the data (χ²/DF = 1.67; CFI = .97; TLI = .96; RMSEA = .06), explaining 82% of variance in behavioral intention and 44% of variance in activity attendance. After adding health factors to the model, only mental health yielded a significant indirect effect on activity attendance.

Conclusion: Results provide preliminary support for the viability of TPB as a framework to explain resident activity attendance in AL. Thus, the decision to attend programmed activities in AL may represent a social cognitive process, influenced by mental health.

Clinical Implications: Interventions may consider targeting TPB constructs and mental health to increase activity behaviors amongst AL residents.

KEYWORDS:

• Theory of planned behavior
• activity
• recreation
• leisure
• assisted living
• structural equation modeling

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Data Availability Statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, [EP], upon reasonable request.

Ethical Principles

The authors affirm having followed professional ethical guidelines in preparing this work. These guidelines include obtaining informed consent from human participants, maintaining ethical treatment and respect for the rights of human or animal participants, and ensuring the privacy of participants and their data, such as ensuring that individual participants cannot be identified in reported results or from publicly available original or archival data.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported in part by a training grant from the National Institute on Aging, award number T32AG044296.