The Role of Recreational Activities in the Promotion of Health among the Aged Population in Taraba State, Nigeria

Abstract

Throughout human history, recreational activities have provided an important source of solace, pleasure and relaxation to the minds of people, especially after going through series of stress wrought by daily routines; hence the old saying, “all work without play makes Jack a dull boy.” Recreational activities have been found to relief the body from physical, mental and emotional stress thereby improving the total health of individuals. This research therefore attempts to investigate the role played by recreational activities in the promotion of health among the aged population in Taraba State. The research objectively seeks to find out the relationship between recreational activities and the health of the aged individuals in Taraba State, to find the factors responsible for poor performance of the aged individuals in recreational activities and to find the factors responsible for poor performance of the aged individuals in recreational activities in Taraba State. The population of the study includes all the aged people in Taraba State who are 50 years old or older, out of which 100 shall be sampled for the study. A researcher developed questionnaire shall be used as the instrument for data collection and descriptive statistics of frequency, percentages, mean and standard deviation shall be used to analyse the demographic characteristics of the respondents. Pearson product Moment Correlation (PPMC) Coefficient shall be used to test the hypotheses formulated for this research. An alpha level of 0.05 was used to accept or reject the null hypotheses.