Daily activities and psychological need satisfaction of elderly adults: the experience sampling method

ABSTRACT

This study aimed to investigate older adults’ daily activities (e.g., learning activities and companionship) and the relations of these activities with the satisfaction of the basic psychological needs using the Experience Sampling Method (ESM). We propose a multilevel model to delineate the effects of daily experiences on the satisfaction of autonomy, competence, and relatedness needs. The current research was conducted by sending reminder messages and collecting daily responses via the Line@ application on mobile phones. A total of 838 valid records were collected (the average number of records per person was 24.65). In total, 838 daily experiences nested 34 older adults’ completed diary records for the study. The average age was 63.44 years (SD _age = 5.90, range from 52 to 75), and 82.4% were female (i.e., 28 women and 6 men). Each participant needed to complete their record each day throughout the 10-day period. The results of hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) revealed that learning for the elderly, as compared with doing all other activities, is positively related with the satisfaction of the autonomy need but negatively associated with the satisfaction of the competence need. Furthermore, eating as compared with learning for older adults is more likely to satisfy the competence and relatedness needs; however, learning as compared with watching TV may foster satisfaction of the autonomy, competence, and relatedness needs. In addition, as long as they are accompanied, regardless of who their companions are, compared with being alone, the older adults perceived greater satisfaction of the three basic psychological needs.