Elderly’s perceived social support

Abstract

The study was conducted to know the perceived social support of elderly of Dharwad, Karnataka and Sibsagar district of Assam. A differential research design was used to compare the perceived social support of elderly residing in rural areas of Northern Karnataka and Upper Assam. The sample of the study 60 constituted 60 elderly aged 60 years and above, were randomly selected from two rural areas namely Kuburgatti (Dharwad district) and Halwating (Sibsagar district), comprising of 30 samples (15 male and 15 female) from each area. The tools used were the self structured questionnaire, Socio Economic Status (Aggarwal et al., 2005) and Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support (Zimet et al., 1988). The result showed that 51.66 per cent of elderly of both the regions received high support from their spouse, family and friends, followed by 40.00 per cent who reported moderate support and 8.33 per cent who reported low support. Significant relationship was found between family type, family size, marital status, education, occupation, socio-economic status and perceived social support of elderly. Thus, age, education, occupation, marital status, family type, family size and socio-economic status might be the associated factors for perceived social support among older people. Apart from spouse, family members and friends also played non-negligible roles on the elderly’s wellbeing. Frequencies of contacting with family members and friends were more strongly associated with life satisfaction, happiness, and self esteem of the elderly.