Promoting active aging in the elderly: contributions of investment in personal life.

Abstract

Investing in personal life (IVP), leads us to valuing and assigning life goals to human beings, in all their attributes and life stages, contributing positively to active aging. Thus, the aim of the study is to assess levels and determinants of Investment in personal life perceived by a group of institutionalized elderly people. This is a non-experimental, cross-sectional, descriptive-correlational study of a quantitative nature, which was carried out in a sample of 270 elderly people living in institutions in the Center and North of Portugal. A battery of scales was used that included: a socio-demographic characterization protocol, the Barthel Index, the Family Apgar Scale, and a Personal Life Investment Rating Scale (EAIVP). The results showed that the elderly’s perception of the investment in their personal life is distributed relatively evenly over three levels. Thus, 36.3% perceive their investment as high, 30.7% see it as moderate and 33.0% as low. Men tend to rate PVI more positively than women. The analysis of determining factors reveals that the elderly who feel they have invested more in their personal life are those with higher education (p=0.047), who have greater independence in performing the ADL (p=0.035) and who perceive greater family functionality (p =0.022). The evidence found in the study reveals that the levels of investment in personal life perceived by the elderly are divergent, ranging mostly between moderate and high. Higher levels of education, functional capacity and family functionality seem to be associated with PVI, variables that, after being properly identified, should be worked on in order to ensure active and quality aging for the elderly.