Health Status, Room Size, and Activity Level: Research in an Institutional Setting

The relationship of actual and perceived health to each other and to levels of activity, and the effects of perceived health and the number of occupants in a room on activity level, were the primary concerns of this study. It was found that while both the actual and perceived health measures were positively correlated with activity, only the actual health measures entered the multiple regression analysis as significant predictors of activity. However, using a 4 (room size) x 2 (perceived health) analysis of covariance, controlling for age and actual health status, it was found that there was a significant main effect for perceived health and a significant interaction effect. There was also evidence that the relationship of number of occupants in a room to activity may be curvilinear rather than linear, as originally hypothesized.