Factors Influencing Old People's Stress and Coping with It

노인의 스트레스 요인과 대처방안에 영향을 미치는 요인

This study was conducted to analyze factors influencing old people's stress and coping with it. The subjects of this study were 1186 people who lived in 6 cities. The data were collected from September, 2003 to March, 2003. The result of this study can be summarized as follow. 1. 14.3% of the respondents was in good health, while 30.6% of them was not in good health. 11.0% of them had good eyesight and 22.2% had a good sense of hearing. 12.0% of them had good teeth. 2. The level of coping with stress was 59.9 points on the basis 100 points. The level of coping with it actively was highest, while the level of coping with it passively was lowest. 3. Factors which influenced old people's stress were job health condition, leisure activity, smoking, hearing ability, and regular exercise. 4. Factors which affected coping with stress were gender, having meals regularly, smoking, job, vigor, preference of foods, and average pocket money per month. As shown in the above results, the level of old people's stress factors and coping with it were significantly low in the groups of low education level, having less pocket money, living alone, being in bad health, having weak eyesight, having bad sense of hearing, having bad teeth, low satisfaction level with leisure, and having no health behavior. Therefore, the method of decreasing stress factors and coping with it should be developed. The government and related organizations must make great efforts to improve old people's quality of life and increase healthy life expectancy.