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Challenges and benefits: Volunteerism among older adults during Covid-19

Social distancing restrictions and regulations, put in place to reduce the spread of COVID-19, disrupted the daily lives of active older adult volunteers. One year into the pandemic, we used a mixed-methods approach to explore how these regulations had impacted the quality of life, loneliness, and v...

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Autores principales: Sellon, Alicia, Newsham, Tina K, DuMont, Renee, Hollifield, Claire, Thomas, Alicia
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Oxford University Press 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8681644/
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/geroni/igab046.3363
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author Sellon, Alicia
Newsham, Tina K
DuMont, Renee
Hollifield, Claire
Thomas, Alicia
author_facet Sellon, Alicia
Newsham, Tina K
DuMont, Renee
Hollifield, Claire
Thomas, Alicia
author_sort Sellon, Alicia
collection PubMed
description Social distancing restrictions and regulations, put in place to reduce the spread of COVID-19, disrupted the daily lives of active older adult volunteers. One year into the pandemic, we used a mixed-methods approach to explore how these regulations had impacted the quality of life, loneliness, and volunteer behavior of 26 older adults who were active volunteers (i.e., at least an hour a week) prior to the start of the pandemic. All the participants were white and non-Hispanic, and the majority were female (65.4%). The average age was 71, with a range from 53 to 87 years old. On average, participant scores on the UCLA loneliness scale (4.23 ±1.39) indicated a low amount of loneliness and high scores on the Brunnsviken Brief Quality of Life (BBQ) scale (83.54 ±10.97) indicated a high quality of life. Thematic findings from the interviews conveyed that, despite the challenges and risks associated with volunteering during a pandemic, participants valued volunteer work enough to make adjustments or seek out new volunteer activities. The research team identified two overarching themes related to participants' discussions of volunteering during the pandemic: Challenges and changes and Benefits of volunteering during a pandemic. Participants' discussions of how volunteer work changed and why they continued to or sought out new volunteer activities during a pandemic can guide organizations seeking to support or recruit older volunteers, particularly as the pandemic continues. These findings also provide further evidence of the important role that volunteerism can play in the well-being of older adults.
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spelling pubmed-86816442021-12-17 Challenges and benefits: Volunteerism among older adults during Covid-19 Sellon, Alicia Newsham, Tina K DuMont, Renee Hollifield, Claire Thomas, Alicia Innov Aging Abstracts Social distancing restrictions and regulations, put in place to reduce the spread of COVID-19, disrupted the daily lives of active older adult volunteers. One year into the pandemic, we used a mixed-methods approach to explore how these regulations had impacted the quality of life, loneliness, and volunteer behavior of 26 older adults who were active volunteers (i.e., at least an hour a week) prior to the start of the pandemic. All the participants were white and non-Hispanic, and the majority were female (65.4%). The average age was 71, with a range from 53 to 87 years old. On average, participant scores on the UCLA loneliness scale (4.23 ±1.39) indicated a low amount of loneliness and high scores on the Brunnsviken Brief Quality of Life (BBQ) scale (83.54 ±10.97) indicated a high quality of life. Thematic findings from the interviews conveyed that, despite the challenges and risks associated with volunteering during a pandemic, participants valued volunteer work enough to make adjustments or seek out new volunteer activities. The research team identified two overarching themes related to participants' discussions of volunteering during the pandemic: Challenges and changes and Benefits of volunteering during a pandemic. Participants' discussions of how volunteer work changed and why they continued to or sought out new volunteer activities during a pandemic can guide organizations seeking to support or recruit older volunteers, particularly as the pandemic continues. These findings also provide further evidence of the important role that volunteerism can play in the well-being of older adults. Oxford University Press 2021-12-17 /pmc/articles/PMC8681644/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/geroni/igab046.3363 Text en © The Author(s) 2021. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Gerontological Society of America. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) ), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Abstracts
Sellon, Alicia
Newsham, Tina K
DuMont, Renee
Hollifield, Claire
Thomas, Alicia
Challenges and benefits: Volunteerism among older adults during Covid-19
title Challenges and benefits: Volunteerism among older adults during Covid-19
title_full Challenges and benefits: Volunteerism among older adults during Covid-19
title_fullStr Challenges and benefits: Volunteerism among older adults during Covid-19
title_full_unstemmed Challenges and benefits: Volunteerism among older adults during Covid-19
title_short Challenges and benefits: Volunteerism among older adults during Covid-19
title_sort challenges and benefits: volunteerism among older adults during covid-19
topic Abstracts
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8681644/
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/geroni/igab046.3363
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