Effects of Physical Fitness Using a Kinect Interventional System for Pre-frail Community-dwelling Elderly Adults

3.3.1 Participants The subjects of this study are the elderly from the community care center in Kaohsiung City. Our goal is to recruit two groups with 30 subjects in each group, making it a total of 60 subjects. The recruitment method of this study is to upload poster advertisements in the community and the bulletin board of Kaohsiung Veterans General Hospital to recruit subjects. The purpose is to select those who meet the criteria and agree to participate in the research. Eligible subjects must sign a human experiment consent form approved by the Human Experiment Committee of Kaohsiung Veterans General Hospital.

Recruitment of subjects must meet the following standard conditions: (1) elders over the age of 65 living in the community; (2) those who use the frailty SOF scale to evaluate any of the three assessments, with the answer being "yes" for any of them (pre frailty) (given in Appendix 1); (3) able to walk independently for five minutes regardless of mobility aids; (4) drug stability in the past one month.

The exclusion criteria is as follows: (1) Those who meet the DSM-IV criteria and have psychiatric comorbidities (for example, major depression); (2) Clinically diagnosed with dementia (Dementia) or other severe cognitive impairment (mini mental state examination score less than 24 points); (3) history of stroke, traumatic brain injury or other neurological disease; (4) acute lower extremity or lower back pain, peripheral neuropathy, rheumatic- and orthopedic-related diseases; (5) unstable diseases and symptoms in the past six months, including cardiovascular disease and high blood pressure and/or diabetes; (6) those who cannot follow the exercise program or participate in other exercise programs at the same time.

All subjects who meet the inclusion conditions first fill in the general information assessment that includes basic personal characteristics, disease history, and related exercise habits. This is used to collect demographic data (depicted in Appendix 2) and fill in the Chinese version of the quality-of-life questionnaire, exercise behavior Conditioning Questionnaire, Pap Scale, Instrumental Activities of Daily Living Functioning Scale, and Mini-Mental State Test. The subject is said to have completed part of the test if they are unable to continue the remaining items due to physical and/or other factors. At this time, the subject will make an appointment to do the remaining items next time. All quizzes are expected to take approximately 40 minutes.

This study was a double-blind random assignment experiment, and the subjects and evaluators were unaware of the subjecs group. The subjects were randomly assigned to the intervention group (aerobic dance or aerobic exercise training in virtual reality), and they were asked to follow the virtual reality program to perform the requisite training. They could see whether their actions and those of other companions are correct.