Prioritizing Protecting Oneself Over the COVID-19 Virus Versus Other Health and Social Needs Among Older Adults Living Alone: A Qualitative Study
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: People aged 65 and older, deemed most "vulnerable" by public health, were targeted by the coronavirus disease 2019 protection measures, which sought to minimize physical contact and social activities. Older adults living alone were particularly affected by these measures. However, such measures meant to protect the older population may not have necessarily reflected older adults' individual prioritization choices. This study therefore aimed to understand how protecting oneself over the virus was considered in the prioritization of other health and social needs of older adults living alone during the pandemic. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS: This study adopted a qualitative design. A total of 17 semistructured interviews were conducted between May 2021 and June 2022 with older adults living alone. All interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim. A reflexive thematic analysis as defined by Braun and Clarke was performed. RESULTS: Our analysis showed 2 forms of prioritization across 2 themes. This first theme focused on participants who reported prioritizing protecting themselves over the virus by limiting in-person contact and activities. The second theme showed that although several participants reported that protecting themselves over the virus was important to them, the prioritization of this need was not shared by all and, in some cases, evolved over the course of the pandemic. DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS: Our study demonstrated heterogeneity in the prioritization of older adults needs. Future public health recommendations should consider these variations in the needs and priorities of older adults when determining public health measures.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.014 | 0.017 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.008 | 0.007 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.004 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.005 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".