So you think you can dance? : investigating perceived dance efficacy and dance program participation in older adults

Abstract

Dance is cognitively challenging, socially engaging physical activity. However, although dance participation is widely proposed to benefit health and wellbeing in later life, empirical evidence remains inconsistent and somewhat inconclusive. Individual factors may account for some discrepancies in dance program effects. Selfefficacy is a psychological construct which may reflect individual differences in factors likely to influence program participation and health and wellbeing outcomes among older adults. However, there is currently no tool that assesses dance efficacy in any population. This study first investigated the psychometric properties of six novel dance efficacy items for older adults participating in two large-scale dance intervention trials (Merom, Grunseit, et al., 2016; Merom, Mathieu, et al., 2016). Results indicated that dance efficacy was weaker in older participants, people with less dance experience, poorer mental health, poorer cognitive and physical abilities, insufficiently active, and with a reduced social network. Participants with low dance efficacy before starting the dance program went on to have lower program attendance, and low attendance was associated with further declines in dance efficacy. These findings informed further dance efficacy scale development. This process extends the measure to represent a broader range of dance tasks and impediments to social dance participation in later life, including scheduling issues. Dance efficacy concepts and items were generated predominately through deductive theory-driven analysis of qualitative focus group data from an aged care dance trial (Merom, Mathieu, et al., 2016), followed by an empirical study of the expert review process of potential dance efficacy items. The final item set is brought forwards for further scale development and validation. Measuring dance efficacy in older adult dance for health research and practice may improve the assessment of dance program participant needs and intervention effects, and dance program evaluation.

Date of Award	2022
Original language	English