Age-related declines in physical health and cognitive functioning may have profound effects on the daily lives of older adults, including influencing the performance of self-care tasks and engagement in social activities. However, little is known about these relationships due to the lack of appropriate daily assessment measures in this population. This article describes an interdisciplinary pilot study that developed daily measures of health, physical functioning, self-care activities, and social activities among older adults. In the study, 182 older adults (ages 60-90) completed a brief (~15 minutes) online baseline survey and online assessments once each day for seven consecutive days. The measures included in this study and their descriptive statistics are presented. Then the implications for future research, including the challenges of using web-based technology to gather survey data from older adults, are discussed.
Web-based survey; Social research; Ageing studies; Older adults; Health; Daily health assessment
