Social participation and its relationship to life satisfaction of the elderly: A field study in Riyadh – Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

Abstract

The current paper aimed to study the reality of social participation among the elderly, determine their level of life satisfaction, and identify the relationship between the level of social participation and the level of life satisfaction. The study is descriptive in nature, relying on the social survey method by comprehensively enumerating the elderly men and women in the King Salman Social Center and in the National Association of Retirees, numbering 157 men and women and collecting the data through a questionnaire. The main findings of the study are:

- Diversity of the forms of participation in which the elderly men and women participate in society, with the general average reaching (2.86 out of 4.0), which indicates the positive participation of the elderly.

- There was a level of satisfaction among the elderly about their life with a mean score (4.13 out of 0.5).

- The results showed that there is a strong correlation with a coefficient of 0.41 between social participation and life satisfaction of the elderly. The higher the level of participation of the elderly in society, the greater their level of satisfaction with their lives and vice versa.