Background

Social participation concerns the possibility of engaging in activities in interaction with others or society at large and contributes to the health and well-being of older adults. In contrast, a lack of social participation is associated with loneliness. It is, therefore, important to understand what strategies older adults use to maintain social participation.

Aim

To explore and describe older adults’ experiences of maintaining social participation.

Materials and methods

Nine older adults, aged 69–92 years, participated in interviews that were analysed through qualitative content analysis.

Results

The overall findings reflect how older adults create opportunities for social participation by developing strategies and striving to adapt to changing situations, emphasizing how maintaining social participation is an active process. Preserving social participation requires motivation and an effort to take initiative to cultivate social relations, maintain community bonds, engage in social events and activities and stay connected with society.

Conclusions and significance

These results may extend our understanding of strategies that older adults use, as well as the challenges they face when striving to adapt to new circumstances. This study may have implications for the practice of how to support older adults’ social participation.

Changing demographics with an increased proportion of older adults indicate the need to develop new health-promoting interventions where the potential of digitization is considered. The aim was to explore and create an understanding of how social online meetings are experienced by older adults. Interviews with older adults generated data that were analyzed using a grounded theory approach. The participants were interviewed after participating in a digital health promotion group initiative provided in a municipality context. A core conceptual category and three subcategories reflected an intertwined process of discovering facets of social participation where internal reflections on personal values and needs were nurtured by an external driven process of becoming part of a group in an online context. Occupational therapists and other health and social care professionals need to consider the various facets of social participation when supporting older adults active and healthy aging.

Background: Fostering social participation for active and healthy ageing among older adults is an urgent issue in a changing society that requires new approaches from occupational therapists as well as from society at large.

Aim: To explore possibilities to foster social participation for older adults in society from the perspective of stakeholders.

Material and methods: A qualitative design was applied. 18 key informants, engaged in supporting older adults in their organisational roles as either professionals or volunteers, participated in five different focus groups discussions.

Results: The results involved two overarching themes that reflects different perspectives on key informants’ possibilities to foster social participation for older adults. The first theme describes how they direct their attention towards their roles within the organisations to foster social participation in their own context. The second theme describes the broader societal perspectives that they address to establish a common ground for collaboration and knowledge-sharing among different stakeholders.

Conclusions: The findings emphasise how addressing common challenges and developing collaboration are essential to foster older adults’ social participation. It is therefore necessary to involve policy-makers and decision-makers. Occupational therapists and researchers should consider the value of occupational justice to drive collective and social approaches.