Background:

Mobility is one essential aspect of healthy and active ageing. Fall related concerns have shown very strong detrimental effects on activity levels among older people. Recent perspectives on these concerns suggest they may be seen as consequences of a lower appraisal of one´s own abilities, in turn deriving from perceived balance problems, fears and other psychological factors. The relation between fall-related concerns and mobility might therefore be explained by the interaction of such underlying factors, for instance physical performance.

Aim:

To attempt a multivariate exploration of underlying factors that might explain the relation between fall-related concerns and mobility

Method:

We visited 153 randomly selected citizens aged 70 or more in a North Swedish municipality. We used the Life Space Assessment (LSA) in order to describe participants’ individual patterns of mobility in various life spaces. By means of Orthogonal Projections to Latent Structures (O-PLS) we explored whether presumed association of LSA ratings to fall related concerns (FES-I), age, and sex could be mediated by physical performance and psychological factors.

Results:

As expected, we found that LSA scores (95% CI: 65-72) were strongly associated to age, sex, and FES-I scores in univariate analyses. However, the O-PLS analysis resulted in a model explaining 60% of the LSA variance, in which motricity-related physical performance (SPPB), dyspnoea (mMRC Dyspnoea Scale), morale (PGCM), and type of housing contributed significantly, while variables such as age, sex, FES-I, and also falls experience, did not. Fall consequence concerns bordered on significance.

Conclusions:

Physical capacities and psychological factors are important mediators of the previously observed associations of fall related concerns to mobility. This opens for new intervention opportunities to be considered. The significance of type of housing should be further researched.