SThis study examined social participation status of Korean young elderly, and its association with self-esteem. Data was obtained through face-to-face interviews, and consists of 1713 participants. Two-step hierarchical regression analyses were conducted. The result were as follows. Firstly, Korean young elderly’s participation was well distributed across the seven social participation activities considered in this study, and there were significant differences in which gender participated more in certain activities. Secondly, participation in some of the activities was significantly associated with self-esteem, and there were gender differences as to what activities proved to be significant in association with self-esteem. These results indicate that the association between self-esteem and social participation may differ according to gender and activity.▮ Key words : social participation, self-esteem, young elderly
I. Introduction
According to statistics, more than 7. 2% of Koreans were over 65 years of age in year 2000, firmly establishing Korea as an aging society (Statistics Korea, 2008). It is predicted that Koreans over 65 will make up more than 14. 9% of population by 2018, marking the beginning of an aged society. As these figures indicate, Korea is now facing a rapidly aging population, and it is becoming even more important to understand how Koreans age and how they could age well. Unfortunately, to date, research has yet to provide a definite answer as to what constitutes aging well. This is especially true for South Korea, which underwent industrialization at an unprecedented rate in 1960s and 1970s, and experienced a rapid increase in average life span. Korea as a country has no learned example to offer its elderly and soon-to-be elderly as to how to live the prolonged old age that is intensifying diversity (Kim, Kim & Jung, 2007). Combined with the fact that later life itself engenders an accumulation of losses, this lack of guideline could be considered extremely detrimental to one’s aging well. There have been, of course, attempts to fill this void, by proposing images of the ideal later life and the ideal course of aging. The concept of successful aging emerged in the process, with no single universally accepted definition, but all the same, convenient. Rowe and Kahn’s (1998) version of its conceptualization was especially influential, and nowadays, the term ” successful aging” is used primarily in reference to theirs: avoidance of disease and disablity, maintenance of high physical and cognitive function, and sustained engagement in social and productive activities. The emphasis on being involved is noteworthy; it is the only social component of the three. This is where the term ” social participation” enters the picture. Social participation, again, is a tricky term, without a precise agreement on the definition. Terms such as social activity, social engagement, productive activity, civic engagement and community involvement are considered interchangeable with it. It is generally left to the researcher’s discretion as to which term to employ and how to define it. As social participation could be understood to include most activities that act to relieve social exclusion (Ju, 2010), and thus allows to measure involvement in the widest sense, this study has chosen this concept in order to examine the young elderly’s involvement with life and how it is associated with their self-esteem, self-esteem being the instrument to measure how they are dealing with later life. As gender is an important factor for both self-esteem and elderly’s social participation, the analyses were conducted by gender. The research questions are as follows: Research Question 1. How is the social participation status of Korean young elderly men and women? Research Question 2. How are social participation and self-esteem of Korean young elderly men and women associated?
II. Literature Review
1. Elderly’s Self-esteemRosenberg(1979) defines in his discussion self-esteem as ” a positive or negative orientation toward an object”, and self-concept, which is a term sometimes equated with self-esteem, as ” the totality of the individual’s thoughts and feelings having reference to himself as an object”. By Maslow’s (1943) definition, ” satisfaction of the self esteem need leads to feelings of self-confidence, worth, strength, capability and adequacy of being useful and necessary in the world”. Self-esteem ” moderates the impact of daily events on mental and physical well-being”, and subjects with ” high self-esteem made more internal, stable, global attributions for positive events than for negative events” (Campbell, Chew & Scratchley, 1991). Self-esteem has been found to be the most powerful direct determinant of happiness (Furnham & Cheng, 2000), and the strongest predictor of spouse-less female elderly’s life-satisfaction (Yun & Lee, 1997). Self-esteem has been known to decline in old age (Robins & Trzesniewski, 2005). Some of the known reasons are changes in roles, relationships, physical functioning and socioeconomic status. However, as self-concept is a ” both a structure and a process, i. e. a dynamic structure that responds to situational stimuli”, it could be modified even as adults, as one develops ” new cognitive and intellectual capabilities and confront new social demands and processes” (Demo, 1992). Previous studies elucidated relationships between elderly’s self esteem and sociodemographic factors as follows. When analyzed by gender, men tended to have higher self-esteem than women (Seo & Kim, 2003; Jung, 2004), Younger age, higher education level, and better health meant higher self-esteem (Lee, 1999; Jeon, 2004; Park, 1995; Ahn, 2002; Byun, 2005; Ahn, 2002; Jung, 2004). Economic variables such as perceived financial status or income, too, were positively related with self-esteem (Kim & Han, 2001; Oh, 2003). Being religious, and having a spouse was also associated with self-esteem (Choi, 2003; Yu & Choi, 2003; Hong, 1999). 2. Social ParticipationActivity theory, one of three major psychosocial theories on the human development in old age, asserts that aging adults will replace lost roles with compensatory activities in order to preserve their identity (Cavan, Burgess, Havinghurst, & Goldhammer, 1949, cited in Utz, MGS, Carr, Nesse, Wortman, & C, 2002). Social participation of the elderly, or the young elderly, is deemed as an ideal example of said compensatory activities. It is an important modifiable health determinant (Levasseur, M., Richard, L., Gauvin, L., & Raymond, E., 2010), and mortality (Berkman, 1995) as well as quality of life (Levasseur, Desrosiers & Tribble, 2008) is said to be associated with it. Social participation as a term, is without a clear consensus on its definition. Many similar terms, such as social activity, social integration, civic participation, and productive activity, are considered interchangeable, while specific meanings do differ, and reasons exist in which term is employed for each study instead of the others. It is of the each researcher’s discretion how precisely to define social participation in a study. In one instance, it was defined as ” paid or unpaid work for a family business or farm, volunteer work and other social group participation” (Hsu, 2007), and in another, it was ” social interaction with persons other than a spouse” and included both formal and informal social roles such as meeting attendance and telephone contact (Utz et al., 2002). Along with the definition, the exact activities that are considered as social participation and how they are categorized differs depending on the research context. There is Rose’s (1967) classic categorization of expressive groups with goals external to the organization, and instrumental groups which serve socioemotional purposes for the members, that became a footing for Kim and Lee’s (2008) categorization of religious ritual, leisure activities, public association activities and ascriptive association activities. Kim and Lee’s categorization is noteworthy as it recognized the importance of ascriptive associations in Korea, which has no equivalent in the western world, and therefore, had been going largely unnoticed in the academia. For Bukov, Mass and Thomas (2002), it was categorized into collective participation, productive participation and political participation, and for Kim (2007), it was paid work, caregiving, and self-development. In this study, social participation is defined in its broadest sense: activities that act to relieve social exclusion. Kim and Lee’s (2008) categorzation of social participation was adopted, and work, volunteering, and care-giving will be additionally examined. The additional three activities are to supplement the facets of young elderly’s life the chosen categorization does not cover, and have been tested in previous studies as forms of social participation with a leaning to productive activities. 3. Social Participation and the Elderly’s Well-beingThe results are varying where the association work has with the elderly’s well-being is concerned. While there exists a study in which getting employed had a positive effect on self esteem (Lee, Kang, Jung, Chae & Ji, 2008), there are works that proved work to be unrelated to the elderly’s well-being (Yun & Han, 2004). Furthermore, some studies assert that work itself is neither detrimental or beneficial to one’s well-being, and what matters is whether one is active at the level and in the form they would like to be (Herzog & House, 1991). Positive results are prominent for volunteering. Kim and Han (2001) proved that even after controlling for sociodemographic characteristics, the self-esteem of those who participated in volunteering was still higher than that of those who did not. This maybe because volunteering makes one feel useful to the society, and helps maintaining positive self-image (Lee, 2005). Leisure activities are especially important for the elderly who have lost, or are in the course of losing their previous roles in work or as parents. Min, Jung and Seo (2001) have proven in their study that participation in active leisure activities enhanced self-esteem and reduced loneliness and depression. Religion activities are still up for debate as many studies differ in their results. In Kim’s 2006 work, religious elderly were proven to have higher self-esteem than the irreligious, and Kim and Park (2000) asserted that the elderly who participated in religious activities were leading healthier lives both physically and psychologically than those who did not. Jung (2004) has flat-out proven that religion and self-esteem had no association between. Public association activities and ascriptive association activities have been proven to have positive effects on the elderly’s subject well-being in Kim and Lee’s work (2008).
III. Research Design
1. Variables: Definitions and Measurements1) Sociodemographic characteristicsConsidered sociodemographic characteris-tics were economical status, health, education level, and marital status. Gender and age were excluded as the analyses were conducted separately by gender, and age was not a factor of interest in this study. The economic status was to evaluate the young elderly’s perceived economic well-being. It was measured with a 7-point Likert scale composed of ” Low-low”, ” Low”, ” Medium-low”, ” Medium”, ” Medium-high”, ” High”, and ” High-high”. Health is a factor that could directly influence the elderly’s participation in social activities, as most activities require at least some level of physical and cognitive capacities. For this reason, health was measured with a 4-point Likert scale. Participants were categorized into 3 education levels for analysis: ” Less than highschool”, ” High school graduate”, ” College graduate or higher”. Those who were without a spouse at the moment, regardless of the reason, were coded ” 0″, and the rest were coded ” 1″. 2) Social participationSocial participation considered in this study was the participation in public association groups, leisure activities, religious ritual, ascriptive association groups, work, volunteering and care-giving. The terms for the former four activities were adopted from Kim & Lee’s work (2008) in which social participation of the elderly was classified into aforementioned four activities. Resident gathering, informal town council, trade association, senior citizens association, women’s association, PTA, labor union, cooperation association, consumer organization, and civic organization were categorized as public association groups. Participation in any of the above was coded ” 1″ in public association participation. Participation in study group, cultural program, hobby group, friend gathering, internet community was counted as participation in leisure activities. Participating in small group activities in religious institutions was coded ” 1″ for religious ritual. Small groups at workplace, alumni association, hometown association were categorized and coded ” 1″ as ascriptive association groups. Participation in work was measured by current work status, and those who were currently working were coded ” 1″. Those who were participating in volunteering groups, or had done volunteering work within the past 1 year, were coded ” 1″ in volunteering. Care-giving was coded ” 1″ only when the respondent had nursing experience. Financial or emotional support, or running errands for the sick person was excluded. 3) Self-esteemSelf-esteem is a term associated with self-worth and self-evaluation (Maslow, 1943), and refers to the affective or emotional component of self-concept (Huitt, 2009). A shortened five-item version of the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (Rosenberg, 1965) was used to assess the participants’ self-esteem in this study. The items are as follows: ” I feel that I have a number of good qualities”, ” I feel that I am a person of worth, at least on an equal plane with others”, ” I feel I do not have much to be proud of”, ” On the whole, I am satisfied with myself” and ” At times I think I am no good at all”. Items were scored on a 5-point Likert scale, and negative items were reverse-coded so that higher score indicated higher self-esteem. The calculated Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of reliability was . 78, indicating satisfactory internal consistency. 2. SubjectsThe data used for this study was obtained from ” Comparison study on retired urban male elderly’s social participation between Korea and Japan” (Research directed by: Han, Gyoung-Hae), conducted in 2009. The data was collected from 1713 participants, age ranging from 50 to 69, of which 836 were male and 877 were female. Participants were quota-sampled for gender and age, in all of 34 districts in four Korean cities (Seoul, Gwangju, Cheongju and Jeonju). 3. Methodology1) Data collectionThe data for this study was obtained through face-to-face interviews using a structured questionnaire. The interviewer read out the list of questions and recorded the respondent’s answers. A professional research firm conducted the data-collection from March 3rd to April 17th in 2009. 2) Data analysisSAS 9. 1 program was used for data analyses. A reliability test was conducted in order to test the internal consistency of self-esteem scale. Descriptive statistics were generated to describe the respondents’ sociodemographic features. The relationships between dependent variables and independent variables were tested through correlation analysis. Chi-square tests and T-test were employed to determine gender differences. To analyze the relationship between social participation and self-esteem, hierarchical regression analysis were performed. Sociodemographic variables were entered in the first model, and social participation variables were added in the second model.
Ⅳ. Results
1. Sample DescriptionThe subjects of this study are 1713 Korean young elderly, and their characteristics are shown in