Factors influencing the psychological independence of retired community-dwelling older adults in Japan

Background: In an aging society, it is necessary to promote successful aging by helping older adults maintain engagement in social activities, especially after retirement. Focusing on psychological independence is critical for helping community-dwelling older adults maintain their ability to do things independently and build appropriate relationships with neighbors. However, shifting one’s mindset from the workplace to the local community can be difficult, especially for Japanese people who prioritize work over local community activities. Few studies have investigated the factors associated with the psychological independence of community-dwelling older adults, so this study examined the factors influencing the psychological independence of older adults in T town, a typical commuter town in Japan. Methods: A self-administered, anonymous questionnaire was distributed to 246 neighborhood association members aged 65 and older. T-test, Pearson’s correlation coefficient, Cronbach’s alpha, and multiple regression analysis were used to develop a model for predicting psychological independence and its two subconstructs, purposefulness and personal accountability.Results: The results demonstrated that psychological independence,purposefulness, and personal accountability were significantly predicted byhaving abilities that are useful to other people (β = 0.399, p = 0.001; β = 0.277,p = 0.019; and β = 0.394, p = 0.001, respectively).Conclusion: The findings suggest that older adults can maintain psychologicalindependence using their existing characteristics, such as hobbies and lifeskills that are useful to others in the community

Handling Conflicts in Distributed Assessment Situations

. The following text summarizes the technical basis for the DECIDE system (DECision support In Distributed Environments). DECIDE is an agent-based approach to support a group of experts in order to find a common evaluation for an assessment object. The experts might be human or computer, with differenttypes of assessment criteria. Different types of conflicts between the experts may be resolved through mediated negotiation via DECIDE. 1 Introduction Complex decisions are based on the evaluation of heterogeneous data. If the decisions are important a team of experts has to come to a mutually accepted evaluation result, which then leads to the decision. In order to come to that point, the experts usually evaluate the data according to their special view of the problem and then negotiate their results by taking into account the potential conflicts between their colleagues. In summer 1997 the German Ministry of Education and Research started a business foundation initiative. Entrepreneur..