AN INVESTIGATION ON PREDICTORS OF LIFE SATISFACTION AMONG THE ELDERLY

Abstract

In the elderly, the perception of life satisfaction and quality of lifeis associated with many factors such as healthy life-span, chronicillnesses, expectations and self-perception of ageing. This study aimsto determine the effects of different variables including age,employment, cognition, polygamy, ethnicity, debt, marital status, sexdifferences, intimacy capability, sleep hours, home ownership status,taking salary, educational level, and living with a partner on lifesatisfaction in the elderly. This study recruited 2322 respondents whowere non-institutionalized Malaysian elderly aged 60 years and above.Life satisfaction was measured by asking in general, Are you satisfiedwith your current life.. The multiple logistic regression analysis wasused to predict the effects of susceptible variables on lifesatisfaction among subjects. Approximately, 90.4 {%} of respondentsreported that they were satisfied with their current life. The resultsof multiple regression analysis showed that ethnic Malay (odds ratio{{}[{}}OR] = 1.46; p = 0.022), and living with a partner (OR = 2.11; p =0.011) significantly increased life satisfaction among subjects (p { } 0.05). It was concludedthat ethnic Malay and living with a partner increased the feeling oflife satisfaction among subjects.