Objectives:
This study aimed to examine the reciprocal exchange of social support between participants in preventive care activities for long-term care in urban areas, as well as its balance with daily relationships with neighborhoods.
Methods:
We distributed an anonymous, self-administered questionnaire targeting 872 elderly people involved in preventive care activities.
Social support between participants in preventive care activities was determined using a scale for measuring the degree of social support exchange regarding to instrumental and emotional support. We classified into four patterns: “high-exchange type”, “high-give type”, “high-receive type” and “low-exchange type”. The connection with the neighborhood was evaluated about the degree and the number of people. The relationship between the patterns of balance of reciprocal exchange of social support and daily relationships with neighborhoods was analyzed by multiple logistic regression.
Results:
Valid data were collected from 554 elderly people (63.5%). Our analysis found that the median of instrumental support receive score was a minimum of 3 points, so there were few occurrences of instrumental support with regard to the reciprocal exchange of social support by those involved in preventive care activities. However, there were 229 elderly people that were receiving and giving emotional support with each other.
There were significantly higher daily relationships of the degree (OR=2.16:95%CI1.14-4.09) and the number of people (OR=1.87:95%CI1.01-3.45) between the elderly who had a well-balanced reciprocal exchange than between those who had an insufficient level of reciprocal exchange of support.
Conclusion:
Our results imply that well-balanced reciprocal exchange of emotional support through participation in preventive care activities is effective in promoting daily relationships with neighborhoods.
