Late life activities of older women, and their relationship to life satisfaction and community services

This study investigated the relationship between the activities in which an older woman is engaged and her life satisfaction, knowledge of services and attitude toward services. ANOVA and correlation procedures are used to examine the relationships.;The sample consisted of 141 women who were between the ages of 60 and 75 who had identified their activities as working (n = 27), volunteering (n = 60) or home centered (n = 54).;An examination of the demographic variables of age, race/ethnicity, marital status, housing, home ownership, number of children, education, income, financial concerns, number of financial concerns, self rated health, number of health conditions, degree to which health conditions interfere with activities, found the groups were statistically significantly different at the alpha = .05 level in the variables of age and self rated health. Workers overall were the youngest group and the volunteers were the oldest group. Volunteers, had the highest self rated health followed by workers and the home centered.;An ANOVA procedure on the relationship between the activity groups and life satisfaction using the summed scores of the questions, revealed no statistically significant result. A separate analysis of the individual questions resulted in loneliness being highest for the workers and older persons being valued higher for volunteers.;When knowledge of services was examined by activity groups, the differences were not significant. There was no difference in attitude toward services between groups. An examination of the individual questions measuring attitude toward services revealed workers felt strongly that services should give care for family members.;The correlation procedure was used to examine the relationship between life satisfaction, knowledge of services, and attitude toward services between the activity groups. Volunteers had the only statistically significant correlation between attitude toward services and increased knowledge of services.;All of the groups showed a positive correlation between life satisfaction and attitude toward services. The correlation between life satisfaction and knowledge of was not statistically significant for any of the activity groups.