School of Health Sciences, Faculty of Biology, Medicine & Health, The University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom.
School of Nursing & School of Public Health, Yangzhou University, Yangzhou, Jiangsu Province, China.
PLoS One. 2024 Mar 28;19(3):e0286490. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0286490. eCollection 2024.
Possible sarcopenia refers to low muscle strength. Prevalence of possible sarcopenia is estimated to be significantly higher in community-dwelling older adults than that of confirmed or severe sarcopenia. However, there are currently far fewer non-pharmacological intervention strategies for possible sarcopenia than for sarcopenia in the community. Meanwhile, one type of non-pharmacological intervention in sarcopenic area, health education, is under-researched, and older people's awareness about sarcopenia is extremely low, necessitating an immediate dissemination tool for prevention. Social media may be a potential, scalable, low-cost tool for this. This study protocol outlines how a social media-based multicomponent intervention will be co-designed with stakeholders to address this evidence gap. Guided by the Medical Research Council's framework, the proposed research covers two phases that employ a co-design approach to develop a theory-based multicomponent intervention to increase sarcopenia prevention in the community. The participants will be recruited from young-old adults (6069) with possible sarcopenia in the community of Changsha, China. Maximum sample size will be 45 participants in total, with 1825 participants in the development phase and 15~20 participants in the pre-test phase. During two rounds of focus groups with older adults, a social-media based intervention strategy will be developed from a theory-based conceptual model and an initial intervention plan formulated by the research group. After this, there will be a three-week pre-test phase, followed by a semi-structured interview to further modify the theory-based conceptual model and the social-media based intervention strategy. The focus of the data analysis will be on thematic analysis of qualitative data primarily derived from the group interview and the semi-structured interview with key stakeholders.
可能的肌肉减少症是指肌肉力量低。与确诊或严重的肌肉减少症相比，社区居住的老年人中可能的肌肉减少症的患病率估计要高得多。然而，目前针对社区中可能的肌肉减少症的非药物干预策略远少于针对肌肉减少症的策略。同时，肌肉减少症领域的一种非药物干预措施，即健康教育，研究不足，老年人对肌肉减少症的认识极低，因此需要一种立即用于预防的传播工具。社交媒体可能是一种有潜力、可扩展、低成本的工具。本研究方案概述了如何与利益相关者共同设计基于社交媒体的多组分干预措施来解决这一证据差距。本研究以医学研究委员会的框架为指导，提出的研究涵盖两个阶段，采用共同设计方法开发基于理论的多组分干预措施，以增加社区中肌肉减少症的预防。参与者将从中国长沙社区中患有可能的肌肉减少症的年轻老年人（6069 岁）中招募。总样本量最多为 45 名参与者，其中发展阶段有 1825 名参与者，预测试阶段有 15~20 名参与者。在两轮与老年人的焦点小组中，将从基于理论的概念模型和研究小组制定的初步干预计划中开发出基于社交媒体的干预策略。之后，将进行为期三周的预测试阶段，然后进行半结构化访谈，以进一步修改基于理论的概念模型和基于社交媒体的干预策略。数据分析的重点将是对主要来自小组访谈和与关键利益相关者的半结构化访谈的定性数据进行主题分析。
