A Preliminary Study About Elderly Self-neglect In China And Questionnaire Compilation

In recent years, Elderly self-neglect(ESN) has drawn the increasing attention from foreign researchers. This is mainly because ESN exhibits a significant positive correlation with mortality risk of the aged, and can be regarded as a predictable sign of mortality risk. Self neglect has the complex characteristics, and goes along with some psychological disorders and physical illnesses. Aiming at the new research topic, this article firstly introduces and combs the research results of ESN, including characteristics, hazard, influencing factors, theoretical models, diagnostic tools, intervention training, and social workers engaging in nursing the aged. Foreign researches of ESN offers the following benefits: the study contents become to more and more variety, the study range expands from family field to community and old-age care institutions fields. But there are some limitations in foreign ESN research field, such as conceptual narrowing, imperfection of theoretical dimensions construction, lacking width and depth of research content, singularity of research method, uniformity of diagnostic tools, insufficient prevention and intervention researches. Based on the above analysis, we explore how related factors affect elderly self-neglect in China, as well as questionnaire compilation of ESNBuild the basic structure of the Elder Self-Neglect Questionnaire(ESNQ) based on the literature review and expert advice, do the preparation of ESNQ by open-ended questionnaire and interview survey. According to the survey results, and combined with the existing theoretical research, form the initial test questionnaire in line with the practical and propagate. Elder Self-Neglect Questionnaire is compiled after exploratory factor analysis. The questionnaire is propagated to investigate 824 participants the elderly self-neglect situation in China with other related questionnaires. According to reliability and validity test, and the influence of personality factor, conclusions are as follows:(1) Elder Self-Neglect Questionnaire includes four dimensions named life-style, health care, social interaction, and living environment.(2) Elder Self-Neglect Questionnaire can be used to investigate China’s elderly self-neglect situation within its good reliability and validity.(3) Elderly seff-neglect is significantly different in gender, age, living place, education level, living condition and health status.(4) Conscientiousness influence elderly self-neglect as a significant negative predictor.