Informal support according to level of competence related to health and functioning in Qualitiy of Later Life

ROJO-PEREZ, F.; DELGADO-SANZ. M.C.; FERNANDEZ-MAYORALAS, G.; FORJAZ, M.J.; AHMED MOHAMED, K.; MARTINEZ-MARTIN, P.; PRIETO FLORES, M.E.; ROJO-ABUIN, J. M.

Quality of Life Improvement through Social Cohesion

Publishing House of Wroclaw University of Economics

Año: 2009; p. 62 - 85

Introduction: An empirical study in Madrid Region has shown that health, family and social networks are among the most important domains spontaneously self-nominated by aged people to define their quality of life. Older adults frequently find, when needed, emotional and/or instrumental support to perform their activities of daily living from their spouses, children, other relatives, friends or neighbours. Moreover, among people aged 65 and more, many are caregivers as well.Objective: This work aims at exploring the role of family and social networks as instrumental support to vulnerable or dependent older persons, under the assumption that there are differences in quality of life according to the level of competence related to health and functioning and to the role of informal support and sociodemograpihcs characteristics.Data source and methods: The data come from a Survey on Quality of Life in old age carried out in 2005, with a representative sample of 499 people aged 65 and over, living in familiy housing in the Madrid Region (Spain).In order to test whether there are differences in quality of life among the older adults according to the level of competence related to health, independence level of funcional ability, receiving formal support and sociodemographic characteristics, univariate and multivariate statistical analysis were applied.Results: When analysing functional level in later life, almost a half of the studied population reported functional limitation and significant differences in health related quality of life were found according to functional state. The risk of having functional limitations among the old people in Madrid was higher among men, increasing age, acomorbidity and those who perceived their health worse than a year before; having functional limitation was less likely among old people with no health problems.Among old dependent people, more than a half reported receiving informal care, and there were significant differences in health related quality of life according to informal care received.