Urban Elderly Spiritual Research Of China Mainland

The number of the elderly population and its proportion of the total population will rise in the future. Elderly health has become a hot topic among scholars. The health of people affected by the interaction of physical, psychological and spiritual health, so it is necessary to focus on the spiritual health of the elderly and make efforts to help older people to improve physical and mental health, regulate negative emotions, develop a positive attitude and find a meaning and purpose of life.The Western study about spirituality is already quite mature, but is rarely mentioned in the Mainland of China. Firstly, literature review is carried out on spirituality, so that we have a basic understanding of the spiritual meaning, characteristics and spiritual assessment. Summarizing the views of various scholars, spirituality generally include:the meaning and purpose of life, strength and vision, transcendence and religious activities. An outline of the focus group is developed with literature review. We carry out focus group interviews with26older persons and their relatives as well as the staff in nursing homes. The author sum up the views of the elderly for the spiritual in the interview, including the recall of the past and vision for the future, the health concerns of their own bodies, the rational pursuit of material life, to live in harmony with their families, harmonious interpersonal relationships, with interest preferences, and expectations for housing and community environment. Chinese elderly people grew up in and lived the kind of relationship-oriented and family-centered life. It can be said that the elderly find a spiritual self-satisfaction in the temporal changes of the harmonious relationship. The author attempts to establish spiritual evaluation. The spiritual health and the meaning of life develop in the pursuit of harmonious relationship between the dynamic processes, including the relationship with self, family, people around and the environment.Based on qualitative data analysis, combined with the "Survey of How to Lead A Happy Twilight Years in Shanghai, the SSS (Spiritual Self-assessment Scale) Scale is extracted. The SSS consists of five parts, each part is six problems. Statistics show that SSS has good reliability and validity. Survey of the elderly spiritual score is between83to150points. The mean of spirituality is120.74, with an average score per question2.77-5. The mean of per question is4.02. The highest score of the sub-Scale is the Scale of the "family", average for each question score of4.3points.Based on previous research, combined with the actual situation of the questionnaire, I select gender, age, marital status as the basic demographic information variables. Spirituality shows a significant difference in the gender variable. Older people in "self sub-scale and "family" sub-scale show significant differences in the gender variable; older persons in the "family" sub-scale show significant differences in marital status.I select education, economic status, religious beliefs and living conditions as economic and social variables. The following conclusions:(1) from the primary level to tertiary level, the spiritual score gradually increases with the higher level of education, but the undergraduate elders’score decreases compared college students. Spiritual score of uneducated elders is relatively higher. Therefore highly educated people cannot be considered to have a healthier spiritual; maybe they need more spiritual care.(2) The economic situation in the questionnaire is the economic situation of the self-assessment, and therefore evaluation of this economic situation is subjective. The data also proves that better self-assessment the economic situation of the elderly have a higher spirituality score.(3) In the focus group, believers and non-believers of the elderly both have expressed the little impact of religion on their spiritual pursuit, and the survey results once again confirm this.(4) To select the living arrangement as economic and social variables and the results show that elders living with one person have higher spirituality score. Reaffirmation is that elders living with the spouse have higher spirituality.The study also found that the biggest impact is the psychological factor, followed by positive emotional factors, environmental factors, physiological factors, social relations factors, education. Showing a positive correlation between the level of mental health and spiritual health with the regreSSSon coefficient3.821; positive emotion has positive influence on spiritual health, the regreSSSon coefficient was0.647; also have with the spiritual health of a positive correlation between the spiritual health and the social relations as well as environmental domain, but the physical domain showing the negative relationship; level of educational and spiritual health are positively correlated, partial regreSSSon coefficient of1.166.