HWS311: Wellness in an Aging Population: Find Articles

What if I decide that Wii bowling would be awesome for residents in a nursing home. That's a great idea, right? 

Maybe, but we need to check the scholarly literature to find out if this has been tried successfully before. Did it help physical and/or mental health in some way?  Were there problems, such as risk of falls?  How would I modify this activity for someone with limited mobility?

Popular (news) sources: Use to get ideas but don't cite these!

Bustillo, M. (2013, February 19). These videogame sites are for 'mature' audiences only. Wall Street Journal - Eastern Edition. pp. A1-A2.

Schiesel, S. (2008, May 15). O.K., avatar, work with me. New York Times. p. 1.

Scholarly (peer-reviewed) sources:  Use to get research results of past studies. Cite these!

Brandt, K., & Paniagua, M. A. (2011). The use of Nintendo Wii with long-term care residents. Journal of The American Geriatrics Society, 59(12), 2393-2395.

Peltier, M. (2007). 'Wii' can work it out. Nursing Homes: Long Term Care Management, 56(9), 72-73.

Ulbrecht, G., Wagner, D., & Gräßel, E. (2012). Exergames and their acceptance among nursing home residents. Activities, Adaptation & Aging, 36(2), 93-106.

A note about keywords:

I can search by using Wii nursing home as keywords and find a few things. But searching by related topics might be better. Try various combinations of:

Video games elderly

Bowling long-term care

Recreational therapy

Remember you're thinking about building a healthy aging program. Look for studies that have similar strategies or outcomes. If the goal is to get people walking, there are multiple strategies to achieve that goal. Thought of another way, walking programs have multiple outcomes like increased strength, cardiovascular health, and improved balance.

There is more than one way to approach these programs.

It's pretty unlikely that you'll find scholarly articles about BOTH the health issue and the geographic area you're focusing on. So approach it this way:

• Search for information about the geriatric population in the geographic area, ie. Census data (see Stats/Organizations tab)
• Separately, search for information about the health concern you're focusing on. These will be in scholarly articles. See searching tips & suggested databases below.

​One strategy for research is to use bibliographies to find additional relevant research on a topic. Finding the full-text of a source from a citation often requires a different type of search to locate. Here are the steps:

1. Determine what kind of source it is. Is it a book chapter? A journal article? (Easiest way to do this is to look for a volume or issue number. Then you know it's a journal article!)
2. If it is a book, look in the catalog to see if we own it. If we don't, you need to Interlibrary Loan it. Do so by clicking "Check Availability" and then the "Request Item through Interlibrary Loan/E-Delivery" button. (This will require you to log in use your UD username and password.)
3. If it is an article, use the Journal List to search for the title of the journal to see which database it is in. (Journal titles are usually in italics in APA citations.) Use the rest of the information in the citation to locate it in the correct database. If the journal is indexed in a database, but we don't have access to the full-text, use Find It to request the title. If it's not in a database, use Interlibrary Loan to request the article. (Use the Article link under the New Requests menu on the left side.)