OLDWELLACTIVE - A self-rated wellness profile for the assessment of wellbeing and wellness activity in older people

Context: The self-estimated wellbeing of community-resident older people is poorly described despite being a major strategy in the health and welfare sector. Objective: To create a comprehensive self-perceived wellness profile of older people and construct an electronic platform for evaluation wellbeing of home-dwelling older people. Design: Construction and evaluation of a novel wellbeing instrument among octogenarians participating in home visits during the years 2007-2009. Setting: Department of Elderly care, Administration of Health and Social Welfare of City of Oulu, Finland and Primary Health Care Unit, Oulu University Hospital, Oulu, Finland. Results: A novel wellness profile showed acceptable internal consistency from 0.71-0.92 and good concordance between most self-estimated and externally evaluated in seven of the nine domains of the wellness profile of octogenarians. Conclusion: Our novel wellness profile called OLDWELLACTIVE points out that older people's own voice is a reliable estimate of their wellbeing and a concordance was shown between self-expressed and evaluated rates in most variables of wellbeing. A self-estimated wellness assessment of older people can be used as an aid for evaluation of their wellbeing and as a short battery of older people's wellbeing for population based strategies in elderly care. (C) 2012 Elsevier Masson SAS and European Union Geriatric Medicine Society. All rights reserved.