Dataset for: Eating Utensil Design for Older Adults: Effects of Handle Diameter and Mass Placement on Static Holding Stability and User Experience

Description

This dataset supports the study “Eating Utensil Design for Older Adults: Effects of Handle Diameter and Mass Placement on Static Holding Stability and User Experience.” The study examined how two passive design factors affect static spoon-holding stability and whether measured motion agrees with older adults’ perceived steadiness. It does not evaluate a clinical treatment or diagnostic method. Twenty right-handed adults aged 75 years or older completed a 2 × 2 within-subject experiment involving two handle diameters (approximately 12 and 30 mm) and two mass placements (proximal and distal). Each participant completed one static-holding trial in each condition, producing 80 IMU recordings. Tri-axial acceleration and angular velocity were recorded at 200 Hz. A four-item structured interview assessed perceived handle stability, perceived mass-placement stability, overall experience relative to a household spoon, and reasons for participants’ choices. The thick handle produced lower resultant acceleration variability in the targeted analysis, although this effect did not survive the broader six-effect Holm sensitivity correction. Distal mass placement increased exploratory 3–12 Hz relative gyroscope power after multiplicity correction, making proximal placement the more favorable configuration for this spectral endpoint. Participants generally perceived the thin handle as steadier but favored proximal mass placement. Objective and perceived stability therefore diverged for handle diameter but converged for mass placement. The deposit is organized into a root-level questionnaire file, a stepwise analysis notebook, and the `Kinematic_Data` directory, which preserves the kinematic workflow from the original IMU recordings through processed signals and final participant-level and inferential outputs. The accompanying README documents the condition codes, questionnaire fields, processing rules, software environment, and interpretation limits.

Steps to reproduce

1. Experimental setup Prepare four spoon configurations using commercially available stainless-steel spoons. Form thin (approximately 12 mm) and thick (approximately 28–30 mm) cylindrical grips using ultra-light clay. Use six 5 g magnets to provide a constant 30 g added mass, positioned near the grip for the proximal condition or near the spoon head for the distal condition. Attach a WitMotion WT9011DCL-BT50 IMU consistently at the proximal end of the grip. Set sampling and Bluetooth transmission to 200 Hz and perform static calibration. 2. Data acquisition Ask participants to hold each spoon at a designated mid-air target using their dominant hand. Counterbalance the four conditions with a 4 × 4 Latin square and record one valid static-holding trial per condition. The dataset contains 80 trials from 20 participants. After testing, administer the four-item structured interview covering perceived handle stability, perceived mass-placement stability, comparison with a household spoon, and reasons for each choice. 3. Kinematic processing Open `Stepwise_Data_Analysis.ipynb` in the Dataset root and run all cells in order. The notebook uses the local `Kinematic_Data` directory. Preserve acquisition-row order and assign nominal time at 200 Hz because the logger’s displayed timestamps may repeat. Select the three acceleration and three angular-velocity channels. Linearly detrend each axis over the complete trial, then apply a fourth-order forward–backward 2–20 Hz Butterworth band-pass filter. Retain the fixed central 1000 rows (5 seconds) from each filtered trial. Calculate resultant acceleration and its coefficient of variation (CV), applying a log10 transformation for inference. Estimate gyroscope Welch power spectral density using a 500-sample Hann window and 250-sample overlap. Calculate 3–12 Hz power relative to 2–20 Hz power and apply a logit transformation. 4. Statistical analysis Conduct 2 × 2 repeated-measures tests for handle diameter, mass placement, and their interaction. Apply Shapiro–Wilk tests to participant-level contrasts and use exact sign-flip and Wilcoxon signed-rank tests as sensitivity analyses. Apply the specified Holm corrections to the exploratory spectral endpoints and acceleration simple effects. Do not remove participants or trials based on observed endpoint values. For `Subjective_Questionnaire_Data.csv`, treat the first row as the column header, the second row as the original questionnaire item codes, and the remaining 20 rows as participant data. Use one-sample chi-square tests for the handle- and mass-placement stability responses. Code the household-spoon comparison as Better = +1, About the same = 0, and Worse = −1, then compare the scores with zero using a one-sample Wilcoxon signed-rank test.

Institutions

• Nanjing University of Science and Technology

  Jiangsu, Nanjing

Categories

Funders

• High School Philosophy and Social Science Foundation of Department of Education of Jiangsu Province of China

  Grant ID: No. 2021SJZDA016
• National Natural Science Foundation of China

  Grant ID: 72401136

Licence