Самооценка здоровья среди пожилых людей Томской области

Abstract

This article aims to identify the factors presumably contributing to the self-perception of health of older adults. Subjective assessments of health, resilience, life satisfaction, happiness are becoming increasingly valuable along with objective quality-of-life measurements. The dataset for the research was collected on the basis of a sociological survey conducted among 400 older adults (aged 55+) in Tomsk Oblast in April 2021. The survey sample is representative for the region in terms of gender and urban-rural balance. The questionnaire was designed in accordance with the methodology and practices of regular cross-sectional international and all-Russia surveys, namely the European Social Survey (ESS) and the Comprehensive Monitoring of Living Conditions (CMLC). We were also granted permission to use the verified version of the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC-25) in Russian from the authors of this methodology. Thus, we present novel empirical data to understand how factors of older adults’ subjective wellbeing are interconnected. Descriptive statistics show that for Tomsk older adults mean self-perceived health assessment reaches 5.5 on a 10-score scale. Higher self-perceived health is registered among men, persons living with a partner, persons without disabilities, employed persons, and rural dwellers. The assessments of happiness, life satisfaction, satisfaction with filial support, communications and resilience are above average. About 30% of the sample are full-time or bridge-employed. All things considered, 42% cannot afford buying anything but food and one third can only buy food, clothes and footwear. We built linear models, ttests and ANOVA with self-perceived health as a dependent variable and a range of socio-demographic characteristics, subjective assessments of well-being, financial status, social interactions and physical activity as independent variables. The results show that self-perceived health is interrelated positively, significantly (р < 0.01) and strongly (high R squared) with life satisfaction (0.402) and happiness (0.368). Other probable predictors like resilience, financial hardship, social interactions, physical activity and satisfaction with filial support fail to show considerable contribution to health self-assessment. Self-perceived health is highly positively correlated with comparative health and total resilience. We can also trace close interrelations between independent variables, namely, happiness and life satisfaction (.667**), happiness and resilience (.448**), which is common for most international surveys and proves the reliability of the data collected.