Stress coping styles of life satisfaction of the nursing home elderly and their investigation with respect to demografic variables

This research was conducted in order to investigate life satisfaction of nursing home residents from the coping style with stress and demographic variables point of view. The research that was realized using measurement means was applied to 126 olderly people who stay in the nursing homes being operated by the Ministry of Family, Labor and Social Services in İzmir Province. The measurement systems that were utilized were the Life Satisfaction (Karataş, 1988) and Stress Coping Styles (Şahin, 1995) along with the Personal Information Form developed by the author. The acquired data were analyzed using statistical methods. The results showed that life satisfaction of women is higher than that of the men as subservient approach and social support search strategies being used more frequently by the women as compared with the men. College graduates are no different than the high school graduates in terms of life satisfaction although they are not the same at the subservient approach. The scores of life satisfaction do not pose major variations from the martial status point of view despite the fact that it makes a difference in terms of self-confident and socşal support search approaches. It is noticed that there is a meaningful statistical difference between unmarried and married persons in self-confident approach. It is concluded upon evaluation of the reached results that investigation of life satisfaction from stress coping styles and demographic variables point of view would provide different perspectives to the studies in this area. Key Words: Old age, life satisfaction, stress, stress coping styles, demographic variables (age, gender, education level, martial status, income)