Quality of Life of the Elderly in Surat Thani Province

Abstract

This research aimed to study the quality of living, to compare the quality of living based on personal factors, to investigate the satisfaction levels of social welfare management, and to study the problems as well as recommendations of the social welfare management in Surat Thani Province.A questionnaire was used to lead the interview protocol in collecting data from 400 research samples. Data was analyzed by percentage, mean,standard deviation, t-test, One-Way ANOVA, and F-test. The results showed that the quality of life of elderly was entirely good in all four aspects that were ocial relationship, spirit, body and environment differentiated by gender, age,educational background, main income source and average monthly income at the significant level of .05. The results of this research also presented that the elderly had moderate level of satisfaction towards social welfare management. There were three aspects which were rated at a high level and seven aspects were at the medium level of satisfaction. The problems of social welfare management of the elderly were late payment of elderly care allowance, lateness of giving services, and inaccessibility in the country areas. The significant recommendations found in this research study were increasing the elderly care allowance and punctual payment, taken care by public organization or public health staff, and establishing monthly health center for checking the elderly ’s health.