Personal and environmental predictors of well-being in the institutionalized elderly

Gustafson, Carol Lynne (1979) Personal and environmental predictors of well-being in the institutionalized elderly. Masters thesis, Memorial University of Newfoundland.

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Abstract

The well-being of 150 cognitively alert institutionalized senior citizens (thirty from each of five institutions), was measured by three predicted variables: Avowed Happiness, the Affect Balance Scale, and the Free Recall Task. Both personal and environmental variables were utilized as predictors of well-being. Various multivariate analyses were performed on the data. -- Well-being as measured by the Avowed Happiness Scale was independently predicted by seven out of fourteen variables. Important personal predictors included: Financial satisfaction, perceived health, self-acceptance, religiosity and sex, while independently predictive environmental variables were: housing satisfaction and perceived autonomy. Four of the variables predictive of the Avowed Happiness Scale also explained independent variance in the Affect Balance Scale: financial satisfaction, self-acceptance, housing satisfaction, and religiosity. Activity, another personal predictor variable, was also an important predictor for the Affect Balance Scale, alone. Cognitive ability and self acceptance were independently predictive of the Free Recall Task. -- Only the subjectively and not the objectively derived environmental variables were predictive of well-being, while the interactions between three environmental and three personal variables were not predictive. The institutional samples differed marginally on both the predictor and predicted variables. Of the three measures of well-being, variance in Avowed Happiness was accounted for to the greatest extent by the predictor variables, in both the multiple regression and the canonical correlation analyses.

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