Subjects
Sixty elderly persons over the age of 75 who lived in the
community were chosen by convenience sampling as participants for this study. They gave their written informed
consent to participation in the study after the experimental
procedures had been explained. The study was approved by
the Inje University Faculty of Health Science Human Ethics
Committee. Subjects were excluded if they had neurological
impairments, severe cardiovascular diseases, persistent
joint pain, or musculoskeletal impairment; required assistance
from another person or a device during ambulation;
scored lower than 24 on the Mini-Mental State Examination
(Korean version); or were on medication that affected balance.
Subjects who were already involved in other exercise
programs were also excluded from this study.
To prevent the diffusion of the experiment’s intervention,
three senior citizen centers that were far from one another
were chosen, and 20 participants were chosen from
each center. Four participants dropped out from the intervention
group 1 (INT 1 group), one dropped out from the
intervention group 2 (INT 2 group), and none dropped out
from the control (CON) group. Therefore, the final number
of the participants was 55. Their general characteristics are
shown in Table 1.