Level of Adjustment among Government Institutionalized and Non Institutionalized Elderly Women | Original Article

ABSTRACT:

Anything that you get adapted to, or any given situation, person, place etc., is often referred to as adjustment. Adapting to certain situations will become considerably easier when an individual is in hisher early developmental stages, but the same adaptability becomes difficult when the same individual reaches hisher later developmental stages. Level of Adjustment influences so many external and internal factors. To name few, external factors can be the living conditions, family stylesize, environment, resources around like medical, food, clothing etc. and internal factors can be physical health, will power, emotional stability etc. Many reviews show that there is a relationship between adjustment and elderly age. This might be the reason behind frequent quarrels and fights between the young and the elderly of the family, which might be thought of as the cradle for misunderstandings between them. These misunderstandings take a larger dimension in various situations. This might be the root cause for the establishment of various institutions like elderly-age homes and orphanages. Keeping the above points in view, the present study aims to find out the adjustment level during elderly age when they are living in different conditions. The present study focuses on two different living conditions. First one being the elderly women living in families and elderly women living in institutions (government institutions). By using simple random sampling technique, 100 elderly women living in Government Institutions and 100 elderly women living in Non- Institutions (with their family) were included in the study. An exploratory design was adopted for the study. The Old Age Adjustment Inventory developed by Shamshad Hussain and Jasbir Kaur (1995) along with the Information Schedule prepared by the researcher was used. The obtained results revealed that Government Institutionalised and Non Institutionalised elderly Women differ in their level of Adjustment.