title: The spiritual well-being of elderly people: a study of a French sample.
abstract: The aim of our research was to identify predictors of the spiritual well-being of elderly people. More specifically, we postulated that subjective well-being and its components would be predictors of spiritual well-being, and more so than age and health status. We invited 133 people aged 60-95 to complete a questionnaire that included the French adaptation (Velasco and Rioux in Revue Canadienne des Sciences du Comportement 41(2):102-128, 2009) of Paloutzian and Ellison's (Loneliness: A sourcebook of current theory, research and therapy, Wiley-Interscience, New York, 1982) Spiritual Well-Being Scale, Ryff and Essex's (Psychol Aging 7:507-517, 1992) Psychological Well-Being Scale (translated by Lapierre and Desrochers 1997), Salamon and Conte's (Meas Eval Guid 15(3):194-200, 1982) Life Satisfaction in the Elderly Scale (validated by Rousseau and Dubé in 1993), and the French version (Blais et al. in Can J Behav Sci 21:210-223, 1989) of Diener et al. (J Pers Assess 49:71-75, 1985) Satisfaction with Life Scale. The results only partially confirm our hypothesis, because only satisfaction with life as a whole and two items in "Life Satisfaction in the Elderly Scale" make it possible to predict the spiritual well-being of elderly people. Moreover, neither health status nor age was found to be a significant predictor of spiritual well-being. This research helps understand better the links between the concept of spiritual well-being and that of subjective well-being of elderly people and could contribute to the development of a tool that could take into account the spiritual well-being of elderly people, whether they be believers, agnostic, or atheist.
authors.affiliation: EA 4431 «Psychologie des Acquisitions, du Développement social et des Interactions en Contextes» (PsyADIC), Département de Psychologie, Université de Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense, 200, avenue de la République, 92001, Nanterre, France, lucy.velasco@univ-tours.fr.
authors.forename: Lucy
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Velasco-Gonzalez
authors.forename: Liliane
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Rioux
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D005260:Female; D005602:France; D015577:Geriatric Assessment / Q000379:methods* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D006304:Health Status; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008603:Mental Health; D008875:Middle Aged; D010549:Personal Satisfaction; D029181:Spirituality; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires