Loneliness among elderly persons of different cultural groups

Abstract

The present study was conducted to find out the effect of culture and age on loneliness of elderly person. Forty elderly people representing two age group e.g. 60-65 year and 75-80 year were selected form two major cultural groups. e.g. Hindu(20 Subjects) and Muslin (20 Subjects). Thus each treatment consisted of 10 subjects loneliness scale developed by prof. Rai and Dr. pandey and known as Meerut University loneliness Scale (MULS) was applied on each subject and in individual session. The obtained data were analyzed by using two way ANOVA techniques . The results revealed the fact that age variable significantly influence loneliness score. The subjects higher in age i.e. 75-80 years of age demonstrated more feeling of loneliness in comparison to elderly persons of 60-65 years of age . Effect of culture was also found to be significant. Hindu eldery persons suffered more from feeing of loneliness in comparison of Muslim elderly persons irrespective of the age variable. The integration between age and culture failed in producing significant F Value.