Auto-estima e qualidade de vida nas mulheres idosas institucionalizadas

Abstract

The inversion of the age pyramid in the second half of the twentieth century brings a new phenomenon: the demographic aging (Nazareth, 2009). Today, talking about aging is also talk about the "feminization of old age" (Carvalho, Brito, Nery, & Figueiredo, 2009), given the growing proportion of women in the elderly population (INE, 2007). In this sense, civil society organizes itself to create responses, including institutions for the elderly. Thus arises the interest in evaluating the Quality of Life and Self-Esteem of older women in the institutions for the elderly. This is an observational, descriptive, correlational and cross study where the following instruments were be applied: a Socio-Demographic Questionnaire; Self-Esteem Scale of Rosenberg (1965, Santos & Maia, 2003); a Perception of Quality of Life Questionnaire - WHOQOL-BREF (Canavarro et al., 2006); and, finally, a Perception of Quality of Life Questionnaire WHOQOL-OLD (WHO, 2005). The main results indicate that these elderly women have a moderate quality of life and self-esteem, and we can highlight the importance of self-esteem on the quality of life (or vice-versa), because the greater the magnitude of the correlation the greater emphasis this importance assumes. In the end the limitations were discussed and the implications of the results in terms of future research and ideas for future research in the elderly female population.

Date of Award	11 May 2012
Original language	Portuguese
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Eleonora C. V. Costa (Supervisor)