Role of social support, spiritual well-being and self-efficacy in predicting the subjective well-being of the elderly

Identifying the factors associated with mental well-being of the elderly is one of the favorite topics of aging psychology. The purpose of this study is the role of social support, spiritual well-being and self-efficacy in predicting subjective well-being of the elderly. This is structured based on descriptive method and is a correlational study, and the statistical population of it are all aged people in Shiraz. In this study, 350 older people aged more than 60 years were selected by random cluster sampling from different areas of Shiraz city to participate in the study. Social support questionnaire (Winefield, Winefield, & Tiggemann, 1992), spiritual well-being (Palvtzyn & Ellison, 1982), self-efficacy (scherrer et al., 1998), and subjective well-being (Gayyers & Margamyv, 2003) were used to collect information. The data using Pearson correlation coefficient showed meaningful and positive relationship between social support variables with each variable of spiritual well-being, self-efficacy and subjective well-being (P<0.001). Multivariate regression analysis showed that 85 percent of the variance in subjective well-being of the elderly is explained by the support of family and friends, religious well-being, self-well-being and self-efficacy. The results of this study had significant implications about the importance of independent variables in maintaining emotional, social and psychological well-being of the elderly.