The Promotion of Active Aging in Taiwan

In this study, we used mailed questionnaires and focus groups to collect data and investigate how non-profit-making organizations (NPOs) and community organizations (COs) promoting active aging in Taiwan. The main sources of our data were 1,688 local community elderly caring centers, 10 service branches for the Hondao Senior Citizen's Welfare Foundation across Taiwan, and 10 community health centers. We distributed 1,708 questionnaires and recovered 525, for a recovery rate of 30.74 %. The results of this study indicated that the respondents' cognition of the content of active aging was nearly identical in considering the most important sequence to be physical health, mental health, learning new things, engaging in volunteer work, being respected, and community participation. The most popular sequence for active aging activities was elderly leisure, neighborhood friendship, elderly healthcare study programs, elderly talent shows, elderly health promotion, elderly talent inheritance, and lifelong education. The factors preventing elderly people from participating in active aging activities were inconvenient transportation, a lack of related incentives, excessive distance, a lack of companions to accompany them, and activity being unsafe. © 2013 Springer Science+Business Media New York.