The purpose of this study was to examine the self-rated health and to find various factors affecting it for elderly women in a rural community, to provide data necessary to establish health promotion programs for elderly.
The subjects of the study included a total of 245 women with above 70 years of age reside in one rural community. VAS(Visual Analogue Scale) for self-rated health, Lawton´s physical & instrumental activity of daily living scales, social network were evaluated.
The results of the study were as follows:
1. The self-rated health of the elderly women were measured on a 100 point (VAS) scale and the score was 53.6, indicating that women rated their health as moderate.
2. Factors such as income (p=0.008). family size(p=0.031), the level of ADL(p=0.039), urinary symptom (p=0.039), nocturia (p=0.001),visual difficulty (p=0.023), the number of chronic diseases(p=0.015), presence of arthritis or neuralgia(p=0.015). social network(p=0.002), housework assistant(p=0.008), emotional support(p=0.031) were significantly related to self-rated health.
3. Through the stepwise multiple regression, social network, family size, visual difficulty, and housework assistant were identified as significant predictors of self-rated health (p<0.05), explaining 21.0% of the variance of the dependent variable.
Better understanding of the determinants of healthy aging hopefully will lead to effective interventions to improve the quality of life of the elderly.
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