Bodily movement and sustaining quality of life in old age

Voluntary movement is an essential building block of practically all roles an older individual might hold. We postulate that physical activity and sedentary behaviour may be indicators of the ability of an older individual to maintain quality of life. The purposes of the present program of research are 1) to develop a method to capture bodily movement of older people in free-living conditions, 2) to validate this method with respect to established assessments of quality of life, 3) to examine the trajectories of physical behaviour in free-living conditions among older people followed up for four years, and 4) to assess whether the trajectories of physical behaviour are reflected in changes of quality of life. The main novelty is in evaluating patterning of physical activity and sedentary behaviour using accumulation and patterning metrics, and in utilising machine learning clustering techniques to evaluate the effects of physical behaviour trajectory on quality of life.

Funding
Academy of Finland (2019-2025)

Research Group
Principal investigator
Timo Rantalainen, PhD, Academy Research Fellow, Gerontology Research Center, Faculty of Sport and Health Sciences, University of Jyväskylä, Finland, timo.rantalainen@jyu.fi

Taina Rantanen, Professor, Gerontology Research Center, Faculty of Sport and Health Sciences, University of Jyväskylä, Finland
Taija Finni, Professor, Neuromuscular Research Center, Faculty of Sport and Health Sciences, University of Jyväskylä, Finland
Lotta Palmberg, PhD, Postdoctoral researcher
Antti Löppönen, PhD, Pstdoctoral researcher
Olli-Pekka Mattila, MSc, Doctoral researcher

Collaborators
National Heart Foundation Future Leader, PhD Nicky Ridgers, Institute for Physical Activity and Nutrition, School of Exercise & Nutrition Sciences, Faculty of Health, Deakin University, Australia