Detecting Changes in Human Agency of Older Adults in Rehabilitation

ABSTRACT

Tools assessing person-centered rehabilitation should promote client self-awareness as well as measure the target outcomes. The aim of this study was to evaluate the ability of the Assessment of Perceived Agency (ATPA19) to track changes in rehabilitation for older adults. Older adults (mean age 79) participated in a ten-month intervention (baseline n = 97, and follow-up n = 63). The ATPA19 and WHOQOL-BREF physical domain showed the strongest correlation and were the only tools that detected significant changes in older adults. The ATPA-19 is an agency-based tool that can reveal new effects complementing those of the assessment tools commonly used in rehabilitation in older adults.

KEYWORDS:

• Human agency
• occupational balance
• occupational competence
• resilience
• responsiveness

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Acknowledgments

The research presented in this article was supported by Kela, the Social Insurance Institution of Finland. The authors wish to thank the rehabilitees and the professionals at the rehabilitation centers. They would also like to thank Michael Freeman for revising the language of the article. They are also grateful to the two anonymous referees for their helpful comments regarding this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Compliance with Ethical Standards

Ethics approval was obtained from the Social Insurance Institution of Finland. All research procedures involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Informed consent

An informed consent was obtained from all participants.

Additional information

Funding

This study is supported by a grant from the Research department of The Social Insurance Institution of Finland project number: 10/1/500/2018.