Community Social Network And Subjective Well-bing Of The Aged People

Social contact and mental health are essential to the life quality of the aged people. Since 1978,our economy has made great development, the material poverty of the aged people has been largely reduced. Yet, social changes has taken another kind of poverty which called spiritual poverty. With social mobility of the children, Living alone is becoming the main life style for the aged people. The aged living alone are more vulnerable to loneliness and anxiety. Therefore, for our pension business, the plight of spiritual pension is more emergent than material.We will face ethical dilemmas and cost problem to improve family intergenerational relationship of the aged people. With the decline of family pension and the rise of home-based care, neighborhood relationship has became the key influencing factor for the mental health and happiness of the aged people. After retirement, the aged people will spend most of their time in their residential area. This increase the importance of neighborhood relationship. In reality, community contacts of the aged is also weakening rapidly. So, it is necessary to make an insightful study on the relationship between community social network and SWB of the aged people. The study will not only improve our understanding of the objective world, but also help us to explore practical measures to promote neighborhood communication and home-based care.Domestic and foreign scholars have done a lot of research works on the relationship between community social network and SWB of the aged. However, there are some deficiencies. First, existing studies include two types:quantitative research based on national statistical data and qualitative research based on field investigation. Quantitative research is accurate but superficial, and qualitative research is thorough but inaccurate. Lack of quantitative-qualitative research makes it impossible to investigate this issue both accurately and deeply. Second, most of the existing studies are egocentric. Lack of whole network studies makes it impossible to explore the role of network structure. SWB with egocentric perspective is of sociological sense rather than administrational sense. therefore, the politics based on those studies are plausible. Third, there was no comparative study. So, we can not understand this issue with comparative perspective, and research validity will be reduced.Social network analysis, the core method of our study, is widely used in the field of social research in recent years. It can not only make quantitative analysis on relational data, but also interpret network structure. This provides a technical instrument for our study. So far, whole network researches on urban communities are scarce, because there are some applicable conditions for whole network analysis. Whole network analysis are suitable to analyze simple, small and complete networks. But most of the social networks of urban community can’t meet these conditions. Our research focused on aged people’s social network in small urban communities. Considering physical reasons, the social relationships of the aged people are mostly in their community. The aged people can form a small whole network with clear boundary in the community. In this way, we cleared the condition obstacles for whole network analysis in our study.Based on existing research results and the premise of community classification, this dissertation explores this problem with the method of social network analysis. Field survey was conducted in four urban communities of an eastern city in China, from July to December 2014. The study is composed of two parts:hypothesis testing and subsequent analysis. Hypotheses is the main direction of this research, and hypothesis test is the main body of research conclusions. Subsequent analysis is an unique part in case study, it is further investigation on details. The two parts of conclusions make this study both macro and micro, accurate and thorough. The conclusions of this paper are as follows:Results of hypothesis testing contain two sections:results based on social network within single community, and results based on social networks within multiple communities. The first section shows that in every community, the better local centrality, closeness centrality, eigenvector centrality and betweenness centrality of the elder’social network, the higher subjective well-being they enjoy. In other words, The higher popularity of the aged people in their local circle, in the whole network and in the core circle, the higher subjective well-being they enjoy. Those who locate in the positions of the middleman will also have higher subjective well-being. These results validate the effect of community social network in promoting subjective well-being of the aged people in the respects of local, overall, position and structure.The second section shows that in multiple communities:(1)The overall subjective well-being of the aged people in four communities is mature danwei community higher than medium mature danwei community, medium mature commercial community and emergent commercial community, and medium mature danwei community higher than commercial communities.(2)The overall subjective well-being of the aged people in the core part of social network in four communities is danwei communities higher than commercial communities.(3)The overall subjective well-being of the aged people in the marginal part of social network of four communities is mature danwei community higher than the others.(4)The overall subjective well-being of the aged people in the scattered part of social network in four communities is of no difference. To summarize the above results, the difference of subjective well-being of the aged people between danwei communities and commercial communities comes from the difference of subjective well-being of the aged people in the core part of social network. The difference of subjective well-being of the aged people between mature danwei community and medium mature danwei community comes from the difference of subjective well-being of the aged people in the marginal part of social network. In this way, we found the mechanisms of community nature and community age in shaping social network.Further analysis was conducted in three sections:competitive hypothesis analysis, abnormal case analysis, and other interesting findings. Competitive hypothesis analysis is to judge the rationality of alternative hypothesis and examine the rationality of the null hypothesis. Results show that the aged people’s average subjective well-being does not increase smoothly but sinuosity with the rising of friend number. We also find that danwei communities dose not necessarily produce positive impacts on the subjective well-being of the aged. Although competitive hypothesis are reasonable to some extent, they can not refute the null hypothesis. The results are also implicational for the revision of our hypothesis.Abnormal case analysis is to dissect the abnormal cases and examine the rationality of the null hypothesis from the side aspect. results show that in every community, some aged people with high network degree enjoy low subjective well-being. Some aged people with low network degree enjoy high subjective well-being. Some aged people prefer commercial communities to danwei communities. Overall, we can give reasonable explanations for these abnormal cases. This section also reveals vivid social phenomenon under the dry hypothesis.Besides, there are other interesting findings beyond the boundary of null hypothesis:(1)There are diminishing marginal effect for the community friend number on the aged people’s subjective well-being. (2)Health condition has different effects on different dimensions of subjective well-being.(3)Residential time can affect the aged people’s subjective well-being through the way of changing their social network. The phenomenon of communication barriers of the aged people in some communities was identified. These findings not only deepen our understanding of the research problem, but also help us to identify the needs and put forward policy suggestions.The end part of the dissertation is policy suggestion. Policy suggestion is based on requirement confirmation. It was concluded that in every community social network plays an important role in promoting subjective well-being of the aged people. In different communities the social networks of danwei communities has significant advantages. This conclusion invite further studies on the following questions:(1)Which factors will affect and restrict the development of community social network in every community? (2)Which factors endow danwei communities an obvious advantages on promoting subjective well-being of the aged people? Can we copy this factors to commercial communities in some path? The answer of the first question will helps us to develop corresponding policies for specific aged people. The answer of the other questions will help us to develop corresponding policies for whole community.Inspired by subsequent analysis, we analyzed the restricting factors of community social network in the respects of sex,age,location and residential time. Analysis suggested that there are communication barriers between aged people with different gender,age,location and residential time. Because of these barriers, some aged people are obviously in the inferiority position of the social network, which lower their subjective well-being. Based on requirement confirmation, we put forward some suggestions to promote subjective well-being of the aged people in the inferiority position. In addition, we have interpreted the driving factor of community social network in the respects of networker and common action. The discovery of common action provides an approach to copy the network advantage of danwei communities to commercial communities.In the last chapter, we illustrate the limitations of this research in the respects of representative problem and dynamic problem, and then provide suggestions for the future studies.