Health Promoting behaviors and quality of life among the elderly in Srisamrong district, Sukhothai province

Abstract

The study was cross-sectional analytical, with three objectives: first, to assess the quality of life of the elderly, second, to explore the relationship between health promoting behaviors and quality of life, and finally, to explore the relationship between the important factors related to health promoting behaviors of the elderly in Srisamrong district, Sukhothai province. A stratified random sampling of elderly people who were over 60 years old and cognitively intact were selected from all 13 sub districts of Srisamrong district, Sukhothai province. A total of 398 volunteers consented to be part of the study. One interviewer collected data, using a structured questionnaire adapted from WHOQOL-BREF. Statistical analysis of quality of life used descriptive statistics, and analysis of relationship between important factors (Socio-demographic, predisposing, enabling, and reinforcing factors) and health promoting behaviors, and relationship between health promoting behaviors and quality of life used multiple regression analysis, with stepwise procedure. The results revealed that only 0.8% of the volunteers had low level of quality of life. The rest of the volunteers had moderate and high levels of the attribute, 75.6% moderate level, followed by 23.6% high level of quality of life. In term of the four domains of quality of life, the elderly volunteers had high quality of life in social relationship (31.9%), psychological health (28.6%), environment health (22.1%), and physical health (15.3%), respectively. Seven variables were significantly associated with health promoting behaviors; they included social support from health promoting personnel, availability of elderly club, accessibility to health services, awareness of own health status, literacy, gender, and educational level. These variables could improve health-promoting behaviors of the elderly up to 33.8%. As for the relationship between health promoting behavior and quality of life, the study found that social interaction, exercise, housing sanitation, stress management, and nutrition practice were significantly associated with quality of life. These five variables could improve the quality of life of the elderly for up to 23.3%. In order to improve the quality of life among the elderly living in Sukhothai province, public policy on elderly should focus on improving availability, of an accessibility to elderly club, which in turns can provide services and activities to increase awareness of the elderly individuals own health status.