A Study on the Factors Influencing Alienation of the Aged

노인의 소외감에 영향을 미치는 관련변인 연구 - 서울시 거주 노인들을 대상으로

The main purpose of this paper is to investigate the factors which affect the alienation of the aged, and to study the relative importance of these factors. This study focused on the following research questions: 1) How do the demographic variables(sex, marital status, family structure, religion, economics, prior occupation, education level) affect the alienation of the aged? 2) How the alienation of the aged is affected by their involvement in social activities? 3) Does the degree of satisfaction with family relationship have a perceivable impact on the alienation of the aged? 4) How does the self-rated senescence affect the alienation of the aged? The research was practiced from the 18th Sept. 1999 to the 30th Sept. 1988, through individual interviews with 300 elderly people, all living in Seoul area. Among them only 285 were used in the analysis. The major findings of the study are as follows; 1) The sex of the respondents makes no difference in the alienation of the age . 2) Marital status is found to be relatively significant in determining the alienation. The degree of alienation of old people with spouse is substantially lower than that of those without spouse. 3) Family structure was found to have no significantly effect on the alienation of the aged. 4) Involvement in religion was found to significantly reduce the alienation of the aged. 5) Econimic factors seems to be critical in defermining the aged. The amount of pocket money avaliable for daily use has direct relationship with alienation. 6) Prior occupation was found to be another significant factor affecting alienation professionals experience far lower alienation than nonprofessionals. 7) The higher is education level, the lower is the alienation of the aged. 8) Active participation in social activities and good relationship with other family members were founded to contribute to lowering the alienation of the aged. Whereas, too much concern over one's senescence appears to hav negative effects on the alienation. The regression analysis shows that the satisfaction with the family relationship has the most important influence upon the alienation of the aged. Following are the factors of self-rated senescence, pocket money in a descending order. All these factors, which explain 42.65% of the total variance of alienation variable are statistically significant(p<.001)