Social support and related factors among the elderly in Thuy Bieu ward, Hue city

Objectives: To describe the status of social support and to find out the related factors among the elderly in Thuy Bieu ward, Hue City in 2019.

Methods: A cross-sectional descriptive study conducted on 400 elderly people in Thuy Bieu ward, Hue City from November to December 2019. The Social Support Rating Scale (SSRS)

 was used to evaluate the situation of social support.

Results: The average score of social support in the elderly was 33.32 ± 6.73; in which, objective support, subjective support and support seeking-behavior had an average score of 7.97 ± 2.41; 19.01 ± 3.95 and 6.35 ± 1.99. The proportion of elderly people with social support at the average level accounted for the majority (51.0%); 45.2% of elderly people had low social support; 3.8% of the elderly had high social support. Multivariate linear regression analysis showed that high social support is often found in highly educated people, married, living together, club/group participation, regularly communicate with people.

Conclusions: Social support in the elderly was not high. This study aims to provide some possible implications to impact on relevant factors to improve social support for the elderly.