The Aging Attitude Of The Elderly And Its Influencing Factors

As an important variable to forecast the elderly’s physical and mental health, attitude toward aging is one of the most important variables which need to be focused on in the field of elderly mental health research. This study aims to identify the characteristics of the elderly’s attitude toward aging, the influential factors of attitude toward aging and the interaction mechanism between various influential factors. This study is divided into the following three sections.The first section is the preparation for the questionnaire research tools which including revising and compiling the Elderly’s Social Participation Questionnaire and the applicability analysis for Aging Attitude Questionnaire, Social Support Rating Scale in the elderly.The second section is conducting the questionnaire survey research. In this thesis, the present author adopts Aging Attitude Questionnaire, Social Support Rating Scale, and the Elderly’s Social Participation Questionnaire to carry out the research.600 elderly people, randomly selected from multiple residential areas, community activity centers, universities for the elderly and parks of Nanjing, were tested and 518 valid questionnaires were returned. The questionnaire survey research mainly draws the following conclusions:(1) Multidimensional differences of the elderly’s attitude toward aging:There is no significant difference between the total score and each dimension score on age and gender; There is significant difference between the total score and each dimension score on whether suffering from chronic diseases, Those who have suffered from chronic diseases are more negative than those who have not on attitude toward aging; There is significant difference between the total score and each dimension score on education level. The elderly who have education background of high school above score significantly higher than those who have only primary school education; There is significant difference between the total score and dimension score of psychosocial loss and physical changes on income.(2) The elderly’s social participation had significantly positive correlation with the attitude toward aging:four dimensions of the elderly’s social participation exert positive influence on attitude toward aging among the elderly; Social support had significantly positive correlation with the attitude toward aging:objective support and subjective support exert positive influence on attitude toward aging among the elderly.(3)The partial mediating effect that is played by social participation between social support and attitude toward aging is verified.The third section is the interview research which aims at providing verification, supplement, and explanation to the conclusions of quantitative research above. The interview research was conducted with 5 elderly people and one or two hour for each interviewee. With each interviewee’s permission, a high-fidelity digital recorder was used to record the interview. After all sound was transcribed into texts, category analysis and situation analysis were adopted to classify and analyze the text. The interview research mainly draws the following conclusions:(1)The elderly mainly focus their view of aging on their physical health. The feeling of getting old is directly reflected by the health decline, which includes energy decline, memory loss. Faced with aging, the elderly feel helpless and worthless. The decay of physiological function, bother of disease, death of a spouse or bereavement events aggravated the elderly’s loneliness, loss and fear of death. Being afraid of suffering from disease and body function loss impairs the dignity of the individual, which becomes the biggest concern of the elderly. Encountered with aging, the elderly said they can do nothing to stop getting old.(2) The main influential factors of attitude toward aging include health condition, the relationship with their children, interpersonal relationships, the way to cope with negative life events (or loss), economic conditions, rich experience, hobbies and daily exercise. There are interactions among all the influential factors, they work together to influence the attitude toward aging.