노인의 의미있는 역할 수행정도와 행복감에 대한 비교

Objective: The purpose of this study was to construct a scale that measures the meaningful roles of the elderly and their performance, and to compare the performance of such roles in elderly people who consider themselves happy. Methods: The participants of this study were 121 elderly people aged 60 or older. The survey tool was a questionnaire consisting of 23 items. It consists of general characteristics, a performance scale of meaningful roles and a subjective happiness scale. In this study, we created 10 roles for elderly people and defined each role through a literature review, as well as how each individual performs their meaningful roles. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, a Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient, Kruskal-Wallis test, and Mann-Whitney U test. Results: As the results indicate, the group of elderly people having numerous meaningful roles showed a significantly high happiness score. A high correlation was shown in the happiness in the elderly with a lot of interactions such as with students, workers, friends, and family members, and participating in organizations, whereas having roles such as hobbies, volunteering, caregiving, home care, and religious participation showed a low correlation. Conclusion: This study proposed an evaluation method that quantitatively measures the degree of meaningful role type and confirms that the happiness of the elderly is significantly increased when their score of meaningful role performance is high. This study can be used as basic data for the development of evaluation tools for a meaningful role performance.