Research On The Interpersonal Well-being Of Elderly Living At Home

Since China entered the aging society,in the face of the large scale of the elderly population,aging fast,not rich first old,the proportion of empty nester more than half,how to protect the happy life of old people becomes the realistic challenge that government and every family have to face.The life of old people will become to normalize and normalized if they living in their familiar environment.As the center of daily activities and interpersonal networks of the old people,the community has the unique advantage of being able to integrate the resources of the government,the family and the society.From the historical background of Chinese social culture and the characteristics of the aging,this paper will discuss the connotation of the interpersonal wellbeing of the elderly in the community,formatting measurement tool,analyzing of the characteristics and influencing factors of interpersonal well-being of the elderly living at home.On the basis of this,the paper puts forward countermeasures and suggestions to improve the interpersonal well-being of the elderly living at home.The first part is the literature review and the problem proposed.Literature review from two aspects: the aging and caring at home,the well-being and interpersonal well-being.The system analysis of the influencing factors of the elderly happy life is not enough,existing studies emphasis too much on support for the elderly.There are few research on the influence of cultural factors on the elderly well-being,and it will be the breakthrough point of this study.In addition to this,it is important significance toimprove the interpersonal well-being in solving the problem of the old age caring at home.The second part is the study on the connotation of interpersonal well-being of the elderly living at home,including study one and study two.The Chinese interpersonal well-being is influenced by the traditional culture,showing "Ren" characteristics,concentrated expression in the "Ren" as the representative of the traditional Confucian culture.Study one is a grounded research on the Ren’s connotation of interpersonal well-being.Materials in the study are the Ren’s connotation of interpersonal well-being which appeared 213 times in the three Confucianism classical books which respectively are Analects of Confucius,Rites,Mencius.It is being encoded in three layers from bottom to top,which are open encoding,relative encoding,until the core encoding formation model.On the process of model formating,initial theory hypothesis flows from the meaning of Ren explained by original book firstly,the hypothesis is proved by looking through literary works secondly,the hypothesis is being revised until the theory leads to saturation lastly.As is shown by the results,the Ren’s connotation of interpersonal well-being is constituted by three dimensions which are Self-cultivation,others-comfort,self-others-bond.Personal cultivation is made up of five relative encoding which are independent,self-esteem,self-restraint,examining one’s behavior,peace of mental.Others-comfort is also made up of five relative encoding which are love,justice,courtesy,peace,sympathy.Self-others-bond is made up of two relative encoding which are taking one and others both in consider,considering others in one’s own place.Study two is a qualitative research on the interpersonal well-being of the elderly living at home,using a method of combining in-depth interview and grounded research,the index system and its influencing factors of the interpersonal well-being of the elderly in the community were preliminarily constructed.Individual interviews involving 27 old people with different occupations,different gender,different economic levels.Qualitative analysis results shows that the interpersonal well-being of the elderly living at home was mainly manifested in the interpersonal satisfaction and the interpersonal value.The interpersonal satisfaction comes from the support of the relatives,neighbors/friends,social.The interpersonal value is derived from three aspects of social participation including the individual orientation,family orientation,socialorientation.The structure of interpersonal well-being of the elderly living at home reflect the connotation of interpersonal well-being based on "Ren".The third part is the scale development of the interpersonal well-being of the elderly living at home,and the reliability-validity test of the scale,including study three and study four.In study three,by summarizing foregoing researches,it constructed the frame of the interpersonal well-being of the elderly living at home.By practical structure of the interpersonal well-being of the elderly living at home,it uses methods of closed questionnaire and exploring factor analysis to develop the interpersonal well-being of the elderly living at home self rating questionnaire which had two dimensions and 9 items respectively.Study four is the reliability and validity test of the scale,validity study of the scale used “overall urban well-being index”,“life satisfaction scale”,“emotional LAP scale”.Data shows that both self rating and his rating scales are in line with the requirements of the psychometric validity.The fourth part is the analysis on the characteristics of the interpersonal well-being of the elderly living at home,including study five.In study five,The score characteristics of interpersonal well-being of the elderly living at home based on self rating questionnaire of the age,gender,health,economic status,marital status,children’s situation and the number of contacts per day were studied.Data shows that there are significant differences of interpersonal well-being of the elderly in the community exists among different age,health,economic status,marital status,children’s situation and the number of contacts per day.Specific performance in the following five aspects:1.Elderly people with monthly income in one thousand yuan of above has significantly higher scores of interpersonal well-being(total score and the score of interpersonal satisfaction)than elderly people with monthly income is in one thousand yuan,and the following;2.Elderly people with the disease who need someone to take care of has significantly lower scores of interpersonal well-being(total score and the score of interpersonal satisfaction and value)than the healthy elderly;3.The score of interpersonal well-being(total score and the score of interpersonal satisfaction and value)for widowed and unmarried elderly is significantly lower than that of the elderly living with spouse;4.The elderly people with children around has significantly higher score of interpersonal well-being(total score and the score of interpersonal satisfaction)than that elderly people with children not around;5.The score of interpersonalwell-being(total score and the score of interpersonal satisfaction and value)for elderly who spoke to 3 people and following per day is significantly lower than that of the elderly who spoke to 4-10 people per day.The fifth part is the conclusions.Through the analysis and comparison of the above research results,the following conclusions are obtained:1.This study has completed the construction of interpersonal well-being questionnaire(self rating questionnaire)for the elderly in the community,which contains two dimensions,including the interpersonal satisfaction and the interpersonal value.The factor analysis shows that the structure of the questionnaire is reasonable,the reliability and validity of the questionnaire have reached the requirements of psychological measurement,and it can be used as the measurement tool of the community elderly people’s interpersonal well-being.2.The score characteristics of interpersonal well-being of the elderly in the community based on self rating questionnaire differ in the health,economic status,marital status,children’s situation,and the number of contacts per day.3.The interpersonal well-being of the elderly living at home,including the interpersonal satisfaction and the interpersonal value accord with the theory of interpersonal well-being based on "Ren" with features of Self-cultivation,others-comfort,self-others-bond.The main contribution of this research is that extracted the doctrine of the theory of interpersonal well-being based on "Ren".In this framework,the connotation of the structure of the interpersonal well-being of the elderly living at home were obtained through the empirical research,and the influencing factors of the interpersonal well-being of the elderly living at home were analyzed.But there is a long-term work to do,in the future,with the development of the theory and the practice of community nursing,the questionnaire will be revised and perfected.