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• Married couples display concordance in both physical and mental biomarkers. • Health concordance in married couples were more evident in women. • Women were more vulnerable to the adverse change of their spouse's health. • Men were more sensitive to positive health changes in their spouse. Relationship of spousal health and biomarkers over six years were examined. Nationally representative sample of 483 adults aged 54+ in Taiwan were followed for six years. Four classes of spousal health changes and three categories of biomarker indexes were examined. Biomarkers were assessed by counting the adverse progression on items of allostatic load (AL), cardiovascular disease biomarkers (CVD), and metabolic syndromes, respectively. When the health status of an individual's spouse became worse, women increased their AL by 0.48 (P < 0.05), CVD by 0.56 (P <.001), and metabolic syndrome by 0.43 (P < 0.05). If the health status of a woman's spouse remained poor, it increased her allostatic load by 0.60 (P < 0.05). These effects were only observed in women. In addition, when the health status of a men's spouse became better, man's biomarker profile on AL significantly improved by 0.80 (P < 0.05). No significant moderating effect of education was observed in this sample. Married couples display concordance in both physical and mental health-related biomarkers, specifically, allostatic load. Women were more likely than men to experience adverse biomarker progress on all the biomarkers examined in this study when the status of their spouse became worse based on their subjective judgment, and men were more sensitive to positive health changes in their spouse than women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract The incorporation of technology into everyday life has become the core of the learning process of older adults. However, how technology is implemented in senior learning environments is not well known. This study employed a multiple case research method focused on understanding employment, adjustment, and revision of the teaching strategies used by experienced instructors at senior learning centers. The results indicate that the instructors developed different teaching strategies when teaching older learners, which included: 1) Reserved teaching: where instructors reserve some of the learning content, so elderly learners can continue their learning of a topic if they continue to participate in the same class; 2) Unscripted performance: where instructors flexibly adjust or jump outside the box of the previously scheduled teaching content to respond to ever-changing learning situations and the needs of the elderly learners, and 3) Assistance from peers: where instructors can ease the one-to-many teaching burden and also strengthen the learning confidence of the elderly. Highlights • Elderly learn technology requires different education pedagogy. • Reserved teaching can create a familiar but fresh feeling for elder learners. • Unscripted teaching cope with ever-changing learning situations for elderly learners. • Create a little helper from the elderly learners is critical in elderly teaching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the proliferation in understanding older adults’ acceptance and limitations of Internet technology, the learning needs of older adults living in low Internet usage areas and their acceptance of touchscreen-based apps have lagged behind. This study describes an embedded mixed-method research evaluation of an eight-week touchscreen mobile device training for thirty-nine older adults who were recruited from a community center in a low Internet usage area in southern Taiwan. Among the participants, 20 completed both the pre-test and the post-test and 16 attended the focus group interviews. The design of the training course was based on constructs informed by the diffusion of innovation theory and the technology acceptance model, and it incorporated both a classroom-based and small group tutoring approach. After the training session, the participants reported significantly lower depressive symptom scores compared to baseline. Qualitative interviews reveal the participants’ learning needs related to extended practice, usefulness, and compatibility in adopting touch-screen apps. Findings from this study shed light on the possibility of touchscreen-based apps, including health-, entertainment-, transportation-, and social media-related apps, for improving psychological well-being in older adults with limited Internet experience living in the community. Discussion on their learning needs was also provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: One in five older adults in Taiwan have been diagnosed with diabetes. This study drew on disability data for 5121 nationally representative middle-aged and older adults from the 1996–2003 Survey of Health and Living Status of the Elderly in Taiwan (SHLSET). By employing cohort sequential design and multilevel models, it combined cross-sectional and longitudinal evidence to characterize the age trajectory of physical disability from midlife to older adulthood and to discern the extent to which diabetes contributes to the variation in that trajectory. The main effects of diabetes and diabetes×age interaction in the fully controlled model provide evidence that diabetes independently and consistently changes physical functioning over and above natural aging processes in Taiwanese adults. In addition, while adding diabetes in the age trajectory of physical disability explained 3.2% and 1.6% of the variance in levels of and linear changes in physical disability trajectory, respectively, further adding follow-up status, sociodemographic factors and comorbidities altogether explained 40.5% and 29.1% of the variance in levels of and linear changes in that trajectory. These results imply that preventing the incidence of diabetes-related comorbidities may reduce the deterioration in both levels of and rates of change in physical disability. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Purpose: To investigate the aggregation of health behaviors among fourth graders in northern Taiwan. Methods: This study conducted an analysis of data collected from the 2001 Child and Adolescent Behaviors in Long-term Evolution (CABLE) project, which included a sample of 2075 fourth grade students. Factor analysis and cluster analysis were used to investigate the aggregation patterns. Results: After factor analysis, we found that the 18 health behaviors could be grouped under five factors. These five factors were named: healthy behavior, rule-breaking behavior, substance use behavior, violent behavior, and pleasure-seeking behavior, according to the characteristics of the various health behaviors grouped under each of them. Each study subject was assigned points for each of these five factors and then cluster analysis was used to divide the subjects into four different clusters. The names of these clusters and the percentage of subjects within them were as follows: healthy group (43.47%), violent group (29.11%), pleasure-seeking group (22.55%), and rebellious group (4.87%). Conclusions: A total of 56.53% of the study sample were grouped under unhealthy groups (violent group, pleasure-seeking group and rebellious group), which indicates that already more than half of the students had lifestyles that put their health at risk. It was suggested that health and educational organizations need to place importance on behavioral problems in children and adopt early prevention measures.©2006 Society for Adolscent Medicine. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]