Uncertainty, loss, ambivalence, and connection: conversations with older adults about social isolation during COVID -19 physical activity programme closures
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Group physical activity (PA) creates opportunities for social connection, social support, and regular PA, contributing to older adults’ well-being. Public health restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic limited in-person programming, which led to social isolation and provided an opportunity to understand the contribution such programmes make to well-being. This study explored older adults’ (≥55 years old) experiences of changes to their PA behaviours, programme participation, and social connections as they transitioned from limited opportunities for in-person PA programming during the pandemic to more opportunities as restrictions eased. The experiences of older adults (N = 29; Mage = 68.14 years) were explored using interviews and analysed using reflexive thematic analysis. Three themes were identified: (a) navigating uncertainty and loss; (b) emotional ambivalence about reconnecting; and (c) heightened awareness of the interconnection between the body, PA, and social connection. Restrictions on PA programmes created a sense of loss as programmes were a source of social connection, leading older adults to cope with adversity in various ways. Eagerness to resume participation was often accompanied by apprehension and hesitancy to re-engage in social settings. When participation resumed, participants had heightened awareness of how their physical abilities could affect their physical and social activity. The loss and isolation participants experienced call attention to the value of qualitative interviews, which provided a meaningful opportunity to share their experiences. While disruptions to group PA programmes had negative implications for many older adults, the uncertainty and loss they experienced reinforced the value of group PA for their well-being.
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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 | 0.018 | 0.025 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.017 | 0.016 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.007 | 0.011 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.015 |
| Research integrity | 0.004 | 0.008 |
| 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".