Tate Linda M, Tsai Pao-Feng, Landes Reid D, Rettiganti Mallikarjuna, Lefler Leanne L
University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, United States.
Physiol Behav. 2015 Dec 1;152(Pt A):295-9. doi: 10.1016/j.physbeh.2015.10.003. Epub 2015 Oct 9.
As our nation's population ages, the rates of chronic illness and disability are expected to increase significantly. Despite the knowledge that exercise may prevent chronic disease and promote health among older adults, many still are inactive. Factors related to exercise behaviors have been explored in recent years. However, temporal discounting is a motivational concept that has not been explored in regard to exercise in older adults. Temporal discounting is a decision making process by which an individual chooses a smaller more immediate reward over a larger delayed reward. The aim of this study was to determine if temporal discounting rates vary between exercising and non-exercising older adults.
This study used cross-sectional survey of 137 older adults living in the community. Older adults were recruited from 11 rural Arkansas churches. The Kirby delay-discounting Monetary Choice Questionnaire was used to collect discounting rates and then bivariate analysis was performed to compare temporal discounting rate between the exercisers and non-exercisers. Finally, multivariate analysis was used to compare discounting rate controlling for other covariates.
The results indicated that exercising older adults display lower temporal discounting rates than non-exercising older adults. After controlling for education, exercisers still have lower temporal discounting rates than non-exercisers (p<0.001).
These findings are important as several chronic health conditions relate to lack of exercise especially in older adults. This research suggests that if we can find appropriate incentives for discounting individuals, some type of immediate reward, then potentially we can design programs to engage and retain older adults in exercise.
随着我国人口老龄化，慢性病和残疾率预计将大幅上升。尽管人们知道运动可以预防慢性病并促进老年人的健康，但许多人仍然缺乏运动。近年来，与运动行为相关的因素已得到探讨。然而，时间折扣是一个动机概念，在老年人运动方面尚未得到研究。时间折扣是一个决策过程，个体在这个过程中会选择较小的即时奖励而非较大的延迟奖励。本研究的目的是确定运动和不运动的老年人之间的时间折扣率是否存在差异。
本研究对137名居住在社区的老年人进行了横断面调查。这些老年人是从阿肯色州农村的11所教堂招募的。使用柯比延迟折扣货币选择问卷来收集折扣率，然后进行双变量分析以比较运动者和不运动者之间的时间折扣率。最后，使用多变量分析来比较控制其他协变量后的折扣率。
结果表明，运动的老年人比不运动的老年人表现出更低的时间折扣率。在控制教育因素后，运动者的时间折扣率仍然低于不运动者（p<0.001）。
这些发现很重要，因为几种慢性健康状况与缺乏运动有关，尤其是在老年人中。这项研究表明，如果我们能为那些有折扣倾向的个人找到合适的激励措施，某种即时奖励，那么我们就有可能设计出项目，让老年人参与并坚持运动。
