The purpose of this study is to examine characteristics of the elderly participants who joined community senior clubs and to investigate the elderly's participating performance, attitudes and satisfactions and to find out implications for operations o...
The purpose of this study is to examine characteristics of the elderly participants who joined community senior clubs and to investigate the elderly's participating performance, attitudes and satisfactions and to find out implications for operations of effective operations of the senior clubs.
The study suggests bases for not only establishment of the senior clubs but also promotion of the clubs' programs.
The subjects were the elderly who joined programs of community senior clubs at Cheongju-si. 170 elderly were selected by sampling, and questionnaires of 152 elderly were finally used after excluding questionnaires of 18 elderly who did not give answers.
The self-administered questionnaire that the author made correction and supplemented to meet purposes of the study was used.
SPSS for Windows was used. Frequency, percentage, t-test, ANOVA, and Duncan post-hoc, etc were used.
The findings were as follow:
Firstly, the elderly who joined community senior club programs had characteristics: Elderly women joined the programs more than elderly men did. The number of the elderly who were 65 years old to less than 74 years old to have middle class educational background was the largest. The elderly largely had good health.
Secondly, the elderly participants joined the programs mainly through friends' introduction, media and promotions, etc to make pocket money and earn living expenses.
Thirdly, the elderly participants had significant difference of participation period, number of participating, and participating time, etc.
Fourthly, the elderly participants thought of fruitful life while joining the programs, and they expected of regular jobs, higher income and development of various kinds of jobs in order from senior clubs.
Fifthly, the elderly participants were satisfied with confidence on their own abilities, participating programs, relations with fellow workers, services, education on participating programs, regular living life, services for the community, viability of life through working, overall atmosphere of senior clubs, counselling and relations with staffs and job allowance, etc in order.
The findings suggest promotion of community senior clubs:
Firstly, jobs being suitable to purposes of the clubs shall be developed as many as possible, and the governments shall actively support social job creation.
Secondly, legal and systematic basis shall be prepared to promote the clubs' programs in stable way so that operating organizations shall be given actual training opportunities to put various kinds of programs into practice by allocating more budget and to let the elderly do economic activities and join the society.
Thirdly, various kinds of supporting systems in community shall be linked each other to promote the clubs' programs. In other words, the senior clubs shall cooperate with local governments well to have active connections with senior welfare organizations, senior welfare centers and self-support project organizations, etc in community.
Fourthly, the clubs' programs shall do publicity activities actively to make change of understanding of the elderly's joining in the society in affirmative way. The elderly themselves, family, neighbors, and the society shall be given publicity activities and education in accordance with changes of understanding.