Quality of life and perceived loneliness among institutionalized and non-institutionalized elderly persons

Pages: 844-848
M. Kanchana, Sivaranjini, R., and Aishwarya Srinivasan (Department of Psychology, Womens Christian College, Chennai, Tamil Nadu)

The present study aimed at examining the differences and relationship between quality of life and perceived loneliness between institutionalized and non-institutionalized elderly persons. The study was conducted on 259 elderly persons residing with family or in old-age institutions in the city of Chennai, recruited through purposive and snowball sampling techniques. Data was collected using the abbreviated World Health Organization’s Quality of Life questionnaire (WHOQOL-BREF, 1997) the Perceived Loneliness Scale (Jha, 1986) and a personal data sheet for the demographic details. Translated (Tamil) versions of these questionnaires were used for participants who could not understand English. Results indicated that quality of life significantly differed between institutionalized and non-institutionalized elderly persons (.01 level), with the institutionalized elderly reporting significantly lower quality of life. When analysed according to age, quality of life for the young-old non-institutionalized elderly was significantly higher than that of the institutionalized elderly. No significant difference was observed for the old-old or oldest-old sample, or across perceived loneliness in the sample studied. Among the institutionalized elderly, men experienced significantly higher perceived loneliness compared to women (significant at the .01 level). Quality of life and perceived loneliness were found to be significantly positively correlated [r(257) = 0.401, p< .01].