The Spiritual Health and Social Support with Quality of Life in the Rural Elderly: The Mediating Role of Resilience and Hope

Nowadays, due to the increasing rate of elderly populaion in Iran, it seems necessary to maintain and improve the health and the quality of life (QOL) of them as a vulnerable demographic group. Recent studies have revealed that spiritual health, social support, resilience, and hope may improve QOL in the elderly. Therefore, this study aims to determine the model of QOL based on spiritual health and social support through the mediating role of resilience and hope in the elderly. The study population included all the elderly living in villages of qazvin province, Iran, among whom 300 were selected using convenience sampling method. The measures applied in the current study consisted of Paloutzian and Ellison’s spiritual health, Vaux’s social support, Connor & Davidson’s resilience, Snyder’s hope and the World Health Organization QOL questionnaires. Path analysis was used to analyze the causal model. The results indicated the fit of the model with the data. The results also demonstrated a direct and significant effect between spiritual health (β=0.15, P<0.05), social support (β=0.21, P<0.05), hope (β=0.35, P<0.05) and resilience (β=0.25, P<0.05) with QOL. Moreover, the analysis of the role of multiple mediators using Preacher and Hayes’s approach confirmed the mediating role of resilience and hope in the relationship between spiritual health and social support with QOL. The results contribute to the theoretical knowledge regarding how social support and spiritual health affect QOL in the elderly. The findings showed that social support and spiritual health have the power to predict the QOL through hope and resilience among the elderly. All the four predictive variables can be improved and can be used in QOL-related interventions in the rural elderly.