Influence of loneliness and leisure time activities on general health among elderly people

Influence of loneliness and leisure time activities on general health among elderly people. In earlier days people did not aware about their health conditions as their was lack of education but in today's scenario, each and every individual is conscious about health. They want to enjoy their healthy life. The present study, was, therefore, undertaken to study the influence of loneliness and leisure time activities on general health. The main objectives of the study were (1) to investigate the impact of loneliness on general health, (2) to investigate the impact of leisure time activities on general health, (3) to find out whether or not interactional effect exist between two independent variables on dependent variable i.e., general health. To achieve these objectives a 2 x 2 factorial design in which one personality variable (loneliness) and one social variable (leisure time activities), each varying in two ways, was used in the present study. The two values of personality variable, i.e., loneliness were (a) high lonely and (b) low lonely. The two values of social variable, i.e., leisure time activities were (a) greater number of leisure activities and (b) less number of leisure activities. Thus, there were 4 groups of subjects, namely: 1. High Lonely -High in Leisure Time Activities 2. High Lonely Low in Leisure Time Activities 3. Low Lonely High in Leisure Time Activities 4. Low Lonely Low in Leisure Time Activities In order to form above mentioned four groups of subjects. Loneliness scale (Russell, Paplau & Cutrona, 1980) and Leisure Time Activities check list (Van Willigen & Chadha, 1989) was administered on 410 subjects. The subjects whose score on Loneliness scale fell on or below 1̂ ' quartile (Qi) were considered as Low Lonely while the subjects whose score on Loneliness scale fell on or above 3̂*̂ quartile (Q3) were considered as High lonely. We got two groups of subjects, i.e., High Lonely & Low lonely groups. The subjects whose score on Leisure Time Activities fell on or below 1st quartile (Qi) were considered as low in leisure time activities, while the subjects whose score on Leisure time activities fell on or above 3"̂^ quartile (Q3) were considered as high in leisure time activities. Hence four groups of subjects were formed and on these groups the General Health Questionnaire-28 (GHQ-28), developed by Goldberg & Williams (1988), was administered to asses the general health of the subject. As soon as the subjects finished their task, the test was collected from them and scoring was done. The data thus, obtained were tabulated group-wise and were statistically analyzed using analysis of variance to draw necessary inferences. The findings of the present research were (a) subjects experiencing high lonely and low lonely differ with respect to general health, (b) high in leisure time activities and low in leisure time activities had differential effect on general health and (c) interactional effect was found statistically insignificant. The findings were discussed in the light of previous studies and other potential explanations were offered.