How older citizens engage in their health promotion: A qualitative research driven taxonomy of experiences and meanings

Objectives: In this qualitative study, we provide an in-depth exploration of older people’s\r\nexperiences and subjective meanings concerning their engagement in health promotion as well as\r\nthe emotional and pragmatic difficulties they face during their engagement.\r\nMethods: The study was designed according to the Ethnoscience method, which implies a\r\nparticipatory process that values patients’ linguistic expressions to deeply understand the\r\nphenomena under the investigation and to give it a meaning. Using this method, thanks to repeated\r\nrounds of interviews and q-sorting task, participants created a dictionary, with the assistance of\r\nresearcher, to describe the phenomenon of interest. They agreed on a shared taxonomy of meanings\r\nand experiences related to the phenomenon. Twenty-five North Italian older citizens participated in\r\nthis study.\r\nResults: Participants described a shared taxonomy of health engagement experiences by depicting\r\nthree main positions (i.e., “locked position”; “awakening position”; “climbing position”), which\r\nrepresented different experiential domains grouped by participants into four main semantic areas\r\n(e.g., physical care, soul care, daily lifestyle, contact with ageing). Each position is characterized by\r\nspecific emotions, personal representations of meaning and healthy behaviours that may sustain or\r\nhinder older citizens’ engagement in health promotion.\r\nConclusions: The results of the present study suggest the importance of deeply understanding older\r\npeoples’ experiences and their subjective meanings of health promotion. Particularly, the results\r\nshowed how their engagement in health promotion is framed in a complex system of psychological\r\nmeanings, which may sustain or hinder their ability to adopt healthy behaviours. A deeper\r\nunderstanding of older citizens’ lived experiences, their doubts, and their difficulties in engaging in\r\nhealth promotion may offer some important cues for orienting interventions in this area.