Subjective Well-Being and It's Related Factors in Korean Rural Elderly

농촌지역 노인들의 주관적 행복감과 이에 관련하는 요인

This study aims 1) To explicate the multidimensional structure of a widely used measure of subjective well-being, the Philadelphia Geriatric Center(PGC) Morale Scale is used to measure health in elderly populations and 2) To examine the relationship between the socioeconomic status and related variables, health and physical disability and subjective well-being in elderly populations. The selection of subjects was determined through a survey of 672 rural dwelling elderly persons(269 males and 403 females) aged 60 years and over. The respondents were interviewed by 18 trained health workers using the questionnaire from July 4 to July 9 in 1994. The subjects were surveyed again during the period from August 1 to August 6 in 1994 to conform the questionnaire's reliability. Subjective well-being was evaluated using the Revised Questionnaire of the Philadelphia Geriatric Center(PGC) Moral Scale(17 items, Lawton, 1975). The results are as follows : 1) The item scores were intercorrelated and subjected to a principal component analysis. A rotated three-factor solution was done, accounting for 40.9% of the total variance. Thus, the PGC morale Scale can be derived from three stable factors : Factor 1 was explained "Lonely Dissatisfaction(7 items)", Factor 2 was explained "Agitation (5 items)", Factor 3 was explained "Attitude Towards Own Aging (5 items)". Further, these factors have a high degree of internal consistency, as determined by Cronbach's alpha : 0.7852. 2) The total mean score of PGC Morale Scale was 8.73. Sex, Age, Education, Current disease, Family type, Economic status, ADL, IADL were significantly difference in mean scores of PGC morale scale. 3) In the results of stepwise multiple regression analysis of subjective well-being. the most contributing factors were economic status, IADL, current disease, family type, sex and the R square was 0.23.