Who did it better? Gender differences in effects of a dietary self-management intervention for older community-dwelling adults

ABSTRACT

This study aimed to determine whether there were gender differences in the effectiveness of a 12-week dietary self-management program for older community-dwelling adults in northeast Taiwan. This was a secondary analysis of a previous study; participants (N = 58) were purposively sampled from two public health centers. Non-parametric models examined differences in outcome measures because of the small sample size; 20 males and 38 females completed the study. The results showed males scored significantly better than females for nutritional status, internal health locus of control, and responsibility for food preparation, which may have implications for older female adults’ nutritional health.

KEYWORDS:

• Older adults
• self-management
• nutrition

Acknowledgments

We express our gratitude to the director and the staffs of the Public Health Bureau of Yilan County and New Taipei City in Taiwan for their friendly support, and acknowledge all the participants for supporting this project.

Author contributions

All of authors contributed to study conception and design, SHC collect the data and analysis the data, JHS drafted the manuscript and made critical revisions of the manuscript for important intellectual content, and SHC obtained funding. All authors approved the version to be published.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Ethical approval

The Research Ethics Committee at the researchers’ university (No. 97-1844B) approved the project.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

The project described was supported by Grant Number CMRPF 170043 from Chang Gung Memorial Hospital at Linkou, Taiwan.