Discipline of Sociology, School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
Institute for Social Science Research, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.
J Gerontol B Psychol Sci Soc Sci. 2024 Aug 1;79(8). doi: 10.1093/geronb/gbae076.
This study examines how older adults' (65 years old plus) daily activities shifted in the years around the coronavirus disease (COVID) pandemic.
Using data from American Time Use Survey, this study compares activities across the pre-pandemic (2019 to March 2020), early-pandemic (May to December 2020), and pandemic-normal (2021) periods.
In the first year of the pandemic, there was less time spent on average on leisure outside the home, traveling, and with nonhousehold members, and more time alone and at home, compared with before the pandemic. Moving beyond averages, sequence and cluster analyses find 5 similar typologies of days across the three periods, characterized by days predominated by (a) housework, (b) leisure at home, (c) TV, (d) a combination of leisure at home and outside with TV, and (e) paid work. Duration of time across various daily activities differed, however, even for the same clusters. For example, in days predominated by indoor leisure, adults spent 405 min in this activity before the pandemic, 432 min during the early-pandemic period, and 549 min during the pandemic-normal period. We also observed changes in the proportion of older adults in each cluster. Across the pre-pandemic and early-pandemic periods, the proportion of days predominated by leisure at home increased (9.9%-17.9%) whereas the proportion belonging to days predominated by housework decreased (45.7%-17.6%).
COVID-19 shifted the daily life of older adults, and our findings are consistent with selection, optimization, and compensation theory, documenting that older adult adapted across the first 2 years of the pandemic.
本研究考察了老年人（65 岁及以上）在冠状病毒病（COVID）大流行前后几年的日常活动如何变化。
本研究使用美国时间使用调查数据，比较了大流行前（2019 年至 2020 年 3 月）、大流行早期（2020 年 5 月至 12 月）和大流行正常期（2021 年）期间的活动。
在大流行的第一年，与大流行前相比，老年人平均花在户外活动、旅行和与非家庭成员在一起的时间减少了，而独自在家的时间增加了。超越平均值，序列和聚类分析发现，在三个时期有 5 种相似的日子类型，其特点是（a）家务、（b）在家休闲、（c）电视、（d）在家休闲和户外与电视相结合、（e）有薪工作。然而，即使是相同的集群，各种日常活动的持续时间也不同。例如，在大流行前，以室内休闲为主的日子里，成年人在这项活动中花费了 405 分钟，大流行早期为 432 分钟，大流行正常期为 549 分钟。我们还观察到每个集群中老年人比例的变化。在大流行前和大流行早期，以在家休闲为主的日子比例增加（9.9%-17.9%），而以家务为主的日子比例减少（45.7%-17.6%）。
COVID-19 改变了老年人的日常生活，我们的研究结果与选择、优化和补偿理论一致，记录了老年人在大流行的头 2 年中进行了适应。
