Older woman viewing mobile phone while writing paper notes with a penTerry Quinn is a Professor of Cardiovascular Ageing at the University of Glasgow. He recently led a study, working with volunteers in the Join Dementia Research community. The aim was to investigate what activities of daily living are important to older adults. 

They found that the existing tools and methods often used to measure these activities haven’t changed much in decades. They include tasks that many older people rarely do anymore – like using a telephone directory and writing bank cheques. What’s more, they don’t capture things like internet and mobile phone use, which are becoming ever more important to older adults in their daily lives.

This has far-reaching consequences for many aspects of health and care and wider society, as Terry explains in the blog below. There’s also video summary of the results here.

Why activities of daily living are so important

Looking at how older adults function in their environment is a huge part of what I do. That includes my work as a clinician; as a researcher; and as someone who is involved in policy. 

For example, on the clinical side, whether or not someone goes into a rehabilitation unit depends partly on how well they can do daily activities. On the other hand, when they are able to come out of the unit depends on how they improve these activities. 

When doing research, if you want to look at how effective an intervention is, then activities of daily living are also crucial. We know from focus groups that the main priority for older people isn’t things like reducing their blood pressure. It’s about being able to stay at home and be independent!

Lastly, in the policy space, we need to think carefully about how we design cities in the future. How older people interact within that ecosystem, depends on what activities of daily living are important to them. Remember that older adults are going to be a huge part of society in the future and we need to design around that.

Changing with the times

It’s always struck me that how we measure activities of daily living isn’t given enough thought. Clinicians and researchers see it as important, but they tend to just use the same questionnaire that’s been around since the 1950s.

Also, I always take issue when I hear someone say: ‘most older adults don’t even know how to use a mobile phone.’ I don’t think that’s true anymore. That was perhaps true at one time. But most older adults I see in my practice do know how to use a mobile phone and have a reasonable degree of online digital literacy. 

So there was a need to take a step back and look at this issue of daily living with a more critical eye. That’s what we’ve done through this study. More than anything else, I wanted to raise some visibility and awareness about these measures and start a conversation.

Looking to the future

Based on our research, you could actually come up with a new, much better questionnaire. But 10 years from now, that might become outdated and we’ll be in the same position again. Going forward, we need to think of smart ways to measure daily activities and be adaptive and iterative. Clearly, a paper-based questionnaire with fixed questions probably isn’t the way to go. It’s certainly worth considering a digital tool that is able to update itself as times change and new activities become more important.

Volunteers make a difference

We started advertising the study online, on social media and among community groups that we knew of. We were getting sign-ups in the few hundreds. Then we reached out to the Join Dementia Research community, and it jumped to 2,500 volunteers. Being able to get a large population of people quickly made the difference. I’ve become a big advocate for Join Dementia Research. I think there’s a perception out there that it’s just for clinical trials and big high profile studies. That is certainly one focus. But questionnaire survey work of the type in our study is vitally important as well. The Join Dementia Research community works very well for that. 

To find out if you are eligible to take part in a dementia study, sign in to your Join Dementia Research account. Or, if you are not already registered, sign up today.