The Effects of Walking Exercise on the Functional Physical Fitness, Sleep Quality, and Quality of Life for Community Middle-Aged and Elderly People

In 1993 elderly people already exceeded 7.0 percent of the Taiwan population and Taiwan formally declared itself to have become an aging society. In 2008, however, the proportion of elderly in the total population rose to 10.4%. How to enable citizens to grow old healthily has become an important issue of our times. Therefore, the aims of this 2-year study will be as flows. 1. To understand relationship between habit of walking and functional physical fitness, sleep quality, and quality of life among community middle-aged and elderly people. 2. To understand factors influencing walking habits and needs in walking exercise. 3. To develop promotion functional fitness, sleep quality, and quality of life’s community walking exercise programs among middle-aged and elderly people. 4. To implement and evaluate the intervention outcomes for community walking exercise programs. At the first year, a cross-sectional study design will be conducted to investigate 500 middle-aged and elderly people in a certain administrative district of Taipei. A walking habit survey scale, functional fitness assessment tools, Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index, Epworth Sleepiness Scale, and SF-36 questionnaire will used to gather data on walking habits, functional fitness, sleep quality, quality of life. The focus groups will used to understand factors influencing walking habits and needs in walking exercise, for use as the basis for the second year of a community walking exercise program. The data will be analyzed using descriptive statistics and inferential statistics, including 2 test, t-test, Pearson correlation, ANOVA, and logistic regression. At the second year, adopt an experimental research design, and, taking the village as a unit, randomly apportion the elderly persons who are not in the habit of walking. Among these, experimental group A undertakes walking exercise for one week of at least five days, with at least 30 accumulated minutes each day, at an exercise level of between 60% and 80% of maximum heart rate, using pedometers and telephone reminders. Experimental group B, on the other hand, undertakes walking exercise of the same frequency, duration and intensity as group A, but using telephone reminders only, while the control group simply transmits health walk data sheets. There are about 70 people in each group. The intervention lasts three months, and one week and half a year before it and after it functional fitness, sleep quality, and quality of life pre-tests, post-tests and post-post tests are performed. The data will be analyzed using paired t-test and repeated measures. The results of this two-year research can be used to establish a localized health promotion intervention which suitable to the people of Taiwan, to serve as a source of reference in the future for relevant departments involved in planning exercise and health promotion programs for the middle-aged and elderly people.