Improving the Quality of Life for Residents of Long Term Care Facilities Through Video Games

This paper examines the effectiveness of video games in improving the self-esteem, as measured by the Self-Esteem Scale, and affect, as measured by the Affect Balance Scale, of residents of long term care facilities. Video games were made available for an eight week period to all the residents of one wing of a long term care facility. Residents of a sccond wing did not have the opportunity to play video games and were used as a control group. It was found that the video game group exhibited significant improvement in both self-esteem and affect from the pretest to the posttest. No change was found in the scores of the control group.