Abstract

The purpose of this research was to explain how elderly women manage to maintain high levels of psychological well-being despite losses associated with aging, especially loss of health, and to examine this process in young-old and old-old women. Two hundred and forty three community-dwelling elderly women completed surveys regarding demographic characteristics, their health status, and psychological functioning. The self-system was proposed as a mediator of the relationship between health status and psychological well-being, and a model was examined in which health status had a direct path to psychological well-being and an indirect path through the self-system. Three theoretical perspectives on the self-system were examined in this context: social integration (the self in relation to the social structure), social comparisons (the self in relation to others), and self-discrepancies (internally-generated self-evaluations). These relationships were examined using both mean-level analysis and a structural equation model.

Description

This dissertation has also been disseminated through the ProQuest Dissertations and Theses database. Dissertation/thesis number: 9010263; ProQuest document ID: 303754538. The author still retains copyright.

Author Details

Susan M. Heidrich, PhD, RN

Sigma Membership

Beta Eta at-Large

Type

Dissertation

Format Type

Text-based Document

Study Design/Type

Descriptive/Correlational

Research Approach

Quantitative Research

Keywords:

Elderly Women, Emotional Resiliency, Emotional Well-being

Advisor

Carol Ryff

Second Advisor

Patricia Becker

Degree

PhD

Degree Grantor

The University of Wisconsin - Madison

Degree Year

1989

Rights Holder

All rights reserved by the author(s) and/or publisher(s) listed in this item record unless relinquished in whole or part by a rights notation or a Creative Commons License present in this item record.

All permission requests should be directed accordingly and not to the Sigma Repository.

All submitting authors or publishers have affirmed that when using material in their work where they do not own copyright, they have obtained permission of the copyright holder prior to submission and the rights holder has been acknowledged as necessary.

Review Type

None: Degree-based Submission

Acquisition

Proxy-submission

Date of Issue

2020-06-19

Full Text of Presentation

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