Effect of an in-house publication on life satisfaction and activity participation of residents of a nursing home

The primary objective of this experimental study was to measure the effect of an in-house publication or resident-written magazine on the life satisfaction and activity participation of residents of a nursing home.

Residents at Hillcrest West Nursing Home in Knoxville, Tennessee, were interviewed to determine those who were willing to participate in the experiment and work on a magazine. A random sample of 50 subjects was drawn from the population of willing residents, and the sample was further randomized into a treatment and control group with 25 subjects in each group.

All subjects were interviewed using Neugarten, Havighurst, and Tobin's (l96l) Life Satisfaction Index B. In addition, nursing home staff members kept records of attendance at other activities for one week. An activity score was calculated for each resident based on the number of activities he/she attended that week.

Subjects in the treatment group attended writing workshops over the next eight weeks to produce material for the first issue of a nursing home magazine. Subjects in the control group did not work on the magazine even though they had previously expressed a willingness to do so.

After the magazine was printed and distributed to the entire nursing home, measurements of life satisfaction and activity attendance for participants in the experiment were repeated, using the same procedures as before.

The nonparametric Mann-Whitney U test and Wilcoxon Matched- Pairs-Signed-Ranks test were used to analyze the data. Pairs of scores with a zero difference were eliminated from all Wilcoxon test calculations because a zero difference in scores cannot be considered a negative or positive change (Gibbons, 1976, p. 127).

Results of the study are as follows:

1. Subjects who worked on the magazine had significant increases in life satisfaction scores. Life satisfaction scores for subjects who did not work on the magazine did not change significantly (p<.05).

2. Activity scores did not increase significantly for subjects who worked on the magazine (p<.05). The Wilcoxon test for a change in the number of activities attended by subjects who did not work on the magazine could not be completed because of a high number of zero differences in the activity scores, which resulted in an insufficient number of pairs to complete the Wilcoxon test.