Personal and Social Corerelates of Quality of Life in Institutionalized and Non-Institutionalized Elderly

Abstract

As the world‘s population ages and people live longer, it is becoming increasingly important to ensure that older people enjoy a good quality of life Advancing age seems to bring meaningless misery mainly because the elderly have generally been neglected and been considered as “unimportant” by the modern society. Majority of the older populations are now being institutionalised due to various reasons - be it neglect, abuse or changing trends in youngsters who don’t consider them as “worthy of importance”. Thus, there is a need to study quality of life of elderly in institutionalized and non-institutionalized settings as keeping the elderly healthy has to be high on the list of priorities in this age, where ageing research is clearly gaining momentum.

Thus, the present research was designed to examine the predictors of quality of life of elderly in institutionalized and non-institutionalized settings, viz., affect, hope, spirituality, resilience, socio-economic status, and social support. The sample for institutionalized elderly (N=160; males=80 and females=80) comprised those who were living in old age homes (for at least 6 months) in and around Patiala and Chandigarh. The sample for non-institutionalized elderly (N=160; males=80 and females=80) comprised those who were living with their families in their homes. All participants living in urban cities of Patiala and Chandigarh were taken in the present investigation. Quality of Life Scale by Flanagan (1978), Panas-SF by Watson, Clark, and Tellegen (1988), Spiritual Well-Being Scale by Paloutzian and Ellison (2009), Adult Hope Scale by Snyder, Irving, and Anderson (1991), Resilience Scale by Wagnild and Young (1993), Socio-Economic Status Scale by Aggarwal, Bhasin, Sharma, Chhabra, Aggarwal, and Rajoura (2005), and PGI Social Support Questionnaire by Nehra and Kulhara (1995) were used to collect the data. Inter-correlations were computed and stepwise multiple regression analyses were applied to examine the predictors of QOL in institutionalized and non-institutionalized elderly.

The major findings of the study revealed that for institutionalized and non-institutionalized elderly, quality of life was positively related with positive affect, agency, pathways, religious well-being, existential well-being, and social support whereas, it was negatively related with negative affect. Positive affect predicted quality of life of institutionalized elderly whereas, existential well-being and resilience emerged as (negative and positive respectively) predictors of quality of life in non-institutionalized elderly. Positive affect and agency emerged as the positive predictors of quality of life in the total sample of the elderly. Overall, such findings indicate towards advancing more research and intervention efforts for improving the quality of life of institutionalized and non-institutionalized elderly.