Nursing Homes for the Birds: A Control-Relevant Intervention with Bird Feeders

Abstract

As a modification of the Rodin-Langer control-relevant intervention in a nursing home, this study examined the effects of a responsibility message and the opportunity to care for individually placed bird feeders upon a sample of nursing home residents. When compared to two other groups without this intervention, the responsibility/bird feeder group showed significant pretest-posttest improvements on self-reported control, happiness, and activity and on nurses' ratings of similar variables.