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Article History

Received: 30 August 2024

Accepted: 22 January 2026

First Online: 6 February 2026

Competing interests

: The authors declare no competing interests.

: The study adhered to the ethical principles outlined by the institutional research committee and complied with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its subsequent amendments. Expedited ethics approval for the study’s questionnaires and methodology was obtained from Massey University of New Zealand’s Institutional Review Board (IRB: 4000025246) on 5th July 2019.

: Written informed consent was obtained from all participants prior to the start of the study in August 2019 by research assistants and social service agency staff from September to November 2019. Oral informed consent was provided to illiterate older adults. The scope of their consent covers participation in the study, data use, consent for the researchers to publish the findings in an anonymized and aggregated manner. All participants were fully informed about the purpose of the study, assured that there are no significant risks involved, and guaranteed that their data would remain anonymous and used only in an aggregated and anonymized form. Participants who did not consent to the use of their anonymised data in publications were excluded from the analytical dataset.