Characteristics of social participation as defined by older adults with a chronic physical illness.

Purpose: To conceptualize social participation in line with the experiences of older adults with a chronic physical illness.

Method: Qualitative study consisting of ten individual interviews and two focus group interviews with older adults with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease or Diabetes Mellitus Type 2.

Results: Four domains of social participation were identified on the basis of the individual interviews: (i) social contacts and social activities, (ii) work and informal support, (iii) cultural activities and public events, and (iv) politics and media. Three characteristics of social participation could be distilled from discussions in the focus groups: social contact, contributing resources to society and receiving resources from society. In addition, only positive experiences were considered to be social participation.

Conclusions: In our study, older adults with a chronic physical illness perceived social participation as a positive experience having one or more of the following three characteristics: social contact, contributing resources to society or receiving resources from society. This is fairly consistent with the literature about social participation, although previous researchers did not mention a positive experience condition and disagreed whether receiving resources could be considered as 'genuine' social participation.