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Min and Kim: Predictors of Quality of Life among Grandparents Raising Their Grandchildren: An Ecological Approach
Original Article

J Korean Acad Community Health Nurs 2017;28(1):1-12.

Published online: 12 March 2017

DOI: https://doi.org/10.12799/jkachn.2017.28.1.1

Predictors of Quality of Life among Grandparents Raising Their Grandchildren: An Ecological Approach

Deulle Min1, Suhee Kim2

1College of Nursing, Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea

2College of Nursing, Yonsei University · Mo-Im Kim Nursing Research Institute, Seoul, Korea

Corresponding author: Kim, Suhee College of Nursing, Yonsei University, 50 Yonsei-ro, Seodaemun-gu, Seoul 03722, Korea. Tel: +82-2-2228-3252, Fax: +82-2-392-5440, E-mail: shkim8312@gmail.com

Received 6 October 2016       Revised 16 January 2017       Accepted 1 February 2017

Copyright © 2017 Korean Academy of Community Health Nursing

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0), which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to examine factors affecting quality of life among grandparents raising their grandchildren.

Methods

This study carried out a secondary analysis of data from the 2014 Korean Longitudinal Study of Aging (KLoSA) and Statistics Korea. Data collected from 224 grandparents who reported raising their grandchildren were analyzed using descriptive statistics, independent t-test, ANOVA, pearson correlation coefficient, and multilevel regression analysis.

Results

The mean score of the participants’ quality of life was 62.63. Significant predictors of quality of life of the grandparents included subjective health status, last year’s total house income, number of last year’s travels, frequency of last year’s movie seeing, and number of children's parks per 100,000 population.

Conclusion

These results suggest that public health nurses in improving quality of life of grandparents focus on child-ren's parks and formal social supports as community factors as well as regular exercise as an individual factor in order to be more effective.

Keywords: Grandparent, Quality of life, Multilevel analysis

References

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Table 1.
Characteristics of Intrapersonal Factors and Quality of Life according to Intrapersonal Factors (N=224)
Variables Characteristics Categories n (%) or Median Range Quality of life
M±SD M±SD t or F r p
Quality of life 70 20~90 62.63±15.53
62.63±15.53
General characteristics Age (year) 67.86±7.06 67 56~87 -.10 .144
Gender Malea 35 (15.6) 68.00±15.68 2.25 .026 (a＞b)
Femaleb 189 (84.4) 61.64±15.33
Residence area Big city 120 (53.6) 62.00±17.47 0.22 .804
Small city 82 (36.6) 63.29±12.48
Municipal district 22 (9.8) 63.64±14.96
Health related characteristics Subjective health status Gooda 51 (22.8) 70.98±12.04 29.81 ＜.001 (a＞b＞c)
Middleb 111 (49.6) 64.86±13.27
Badc 62 (27.7) 51.77±16.05
Regular exercise Yesa 107 (47.8) 66.54±13.04 3.75 ＜.001 (a＞b)
Nob 117 (52.2) 59.06±16.76
Grip strength index (kg) 21.74±6.34 20.66 8.2~43.1 .30 ＜.001
Depression score 3.08±2.64 2 0~8 -.39 ＜.001
Cognitive function score 25.27±3.33 26 18~29 .31 ＜.001
Table 2.
Characteristics of Interpersonal Factors and Quality of Life according to Interpersonal Factors (N=224)
Variables Characteristics n (%) or M±SD Median Range Quality of Life
M±SD t or F r p
Family related characteristics Household gross income last year 2,750.12± 2,450 60~12,000 .16 .020
(10,000 won) 2,251.08
Living with children
  Yes 99 (44.2) 61.92±14.26 -0.61 .541
  No 125 (55.8) 63.20±16.49
Child's job
  Yes 220 (98.2) 62.86±15.49 1.65 .101
  No 4 (1.8) 50.00±14.14
Total number of grandchildren 1.74±0.99 2 1~8 .06 .399
Period of caring grandchildren (year) 3.41±4.25 2 0~9 .06 .391
Care hours (hr/w) 59.39±59.13 42 3~168 .06 .400
Social network related characteristics Number of meetings with close friends
  Frequently 141 (62.9) 64.75±15.19 -2.70 .008
  Rarely 83 (37.1) 59.04±15.51
Religious meeting
  Yesa 47 (21.0) 68.09±13.13 3.06 .003 (a＞b)
  Nob 177 (79.0) 61.19±15.82
Social gathering
  Yes 129 (57.6) 63.64±14.89 1.14 .258
  No 98 (42.4) 61.26±16.32
Leisure activities for the past year
  Yes 13 (5.8) 67.69±10.13 1.78 .094
  No 211 (94.2) 62.32±15.76
Number of traveling in the last year
  Yesa 107 (47.8) 67.66±13.15 4.91 ＜.001 (a＞b)
  Nob 117 (52.2) 58.03±16.15
Number of seeing a movies in the last year
  Yesa 21 (9.4) 70.48±12.03 2.46 .015 (a＞b)
  Nob 203 (90.6) 61.82±15.64
Table 3.
Characteristics of Community Factors and Quality of Life according to Community Factors (A=15, N=224)
Characteristics n (%) or M±SD Median Range Quality of life
M±SD t or F r p
Grandchild caretaker support project
  Yesa 1 (6.7) 75.38±7.76 -5.63 ＜.001 (a＞b)
  Nob 14 (93.3) 61.85±15.55
Nurseries regional supply rate (%) 55.13±5.29 55.3 48~68 .24 ＜.001
Number of public libraries per population 100.95±77.36 63 17~217 .22 .070
Number of children's parks per 100,000 population 21.43±6.21 22.38 12~40 .21 .001
Number of public sports facillities per 1,000,000 population 364.97±168.18 287.80 224~1147 .13 .061
Number of healthcare institutions per 100,000 population 5.60±8.74 2.34 0~32 .10 .122
Number of elderly welfare facillities per 100,000 elderly population 843.15±554.61 763.59 329.3~2,314.5 .13 .047
Table 4.
Factors related to the Quality of Life among Grandparents Caring for Grandchildren Using Multilevel Analysis (N=224)
Parameter Categories Model 0
 Model 1
 Model 2
Null model
 Individual level
 Individual-community level
β p β p β p
Fixed effect Intercept 63.26 ＜.001 34.53 .039 11.70 .664
  Individual level Age 0.15 .306 0.15 .298
Female (ref: Male) -1.99 .515 -1.90 .530
Middle subjective health status (ref: Good) -2.48 .256 -3.11 .144
Bad subjective health status (ref: Good) -9.82 ＜.001 -10.50 ＜.001
Regular exercise (ref: No) 3.40 .058 2.94 .097
Grip strength index 0.19 .301 0.19 .309
Depression score -0.76 .055 -0.67 .085
Cognitive function score 0.58 .066 0.54 .084
household gross income last year (10,000 won) 0.01 ＜.001 0.01 ＜.001
Rarely meet close friends (ref: Frequently) -1.55 .428 -2.17 .261
Having religious meeting (ref: No) 4.47 .043 4.32 .044
Number of traveling in the last year (ref: No) 4.07 .035 3.74 .048
Number of seeing a movies in the last year (ref: No) 1.45 .650 2.67 .400
  Community level Grandchild caretaker support project (ref: No) 3.74 .444
Nurseries regional supply rate (%) 0.28 .476
Number of children's parks per 100,000 population 0.47 .035
Number of elderly welfare facillities per 100,000 -0.01 .383
elderly population
Random effect Level 1, δ2 227.72 130.29 127.32
Level 2, μ0 (τ) 12.34 8.82 ＜.01
x2 3.92 2.54 ＜.01
p .024 .055 ＞.999
ICC (%) 5.14 6.34 ＜.01

τ=variance of μ0; ICC=intra-class coefficient.

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