Background: This exploratory survey study examined the relationship between older adults' five socio-demographic determinants (urban/rural residence, gender, age, marital status, and education) and their self-reported perception of importance, desire to perform, and ability to perform nine self-care behaviors related to promoting health and getting preventive health care.
Methods: We reported a secondary analysis of a dataset from an exploratory survey project; we analyzed 2015-2016 retrospective data collected from a cross-sectional survey study, includ-ing 123 adults aged 65 years and older living in southern United States. Data were collected from the Patient Action Inventory for Self-Care and a demographic questionnaire and analyzed using binary and multiple logistic regression analyses.
Results: Advancing age, marital separation, and holding less than a high school education were significantly associated with at least one of the unfavorable perceptions of the importance, the desire to perform, and the ability to perform three self-care behaviors. These three behaviors were: (1) creating habits that will improve health and prevent disease, (2) discussing the use of health screening tests with healthcare pro-viders, and (3) joining in local health screening or wellness events. Gender and urban/rural res-idence were not significant. Conclusions: Comprehensive health care should include an indi-vidual's socio-demographic context and self-care perception of importance, desire, and ability.
Keywords: disease prevention; health promotion; older adults; self-care.