[The relationships among loneliness, social support, and family function in elderly Korean].
OBJECTIVE
To examine the relationships among loneliness, social support, and family function in elderly Korean.


METHODS
The sample for this study were 290 elderly Korean who were at least 60 years of age. Data were collected by interview using the translated Korean versions of the Revised University of California Los Angels Loneliness Scale(RULS), Family APGAR, and Social Support Questionnaire 6.


RESULTS
Subjects were moderately lonely and had moderately functional families. Means for social support were 1.42 for network size and 4.09 for satisfaction. Subjects who lived with their spouses had a larger number of network members than who did not live with spouses. However, living with spouses was not associated with social support satisfaction. The level of loneliness was related negatively to the level of social support network, social support satisfaction and family function in this study. Social support satisfaction and Family function were the significant predictor of loneliness.


CONCLUSIONS
The number of social supporter and satisfaction and family function should be considered in nursing intervention to decrease the level of loneliness in older adults. Further studies and efforts will be needed to reduce the level of loneliness in older adults.
College of Nursing Science, Ewha Womans University, Sudaemun-Gu, Seoul, Korea. OHONG@ewha.ac.kr
Ok-Soo
OS
Kim
Sung-Hee
SH
Baik