2010 Volume 32 Issue 1 Pages 33-47
The purpose of this study was to develop a new questionnaire to investigate gerotranscendence in Japanese elderly individuals aged 65 yr and over, and to clarify the characteristics of gerotranscendence in physically frail but emotionally adapted oldest-old aged 85 yr and over. We developed the new questionnaire on the basis of interviews with 10 elderly individuals, and employed the questionnaire on 500 community-dwelling elderly (men 198, women 302). Factor analysis of the questionnaire suggested an eight-factor solution that included “Awareness of arigatasa and okage”, which is a concept in Japanese culture that all people and living creatures are inter-dependent, “Introversion”, “Transcendence from dualism”, “Religious/Spiritual attitude”, “Release from the social self”, “Basic and innate affirmation”, “Altruism”, and “Let it go”. Using cluster analysis, we classified the 149 community-dwelling oldest old (men 51, women 98) into three groups: a group with high function and high well-being (HF-HWB), a group with low function and high well-being (LF-HWB), and a group with low function and low well-being (LF-LWB). “Introversion”, “Release from the social self”, and “Let it go” in the LF-HWB group were significantly higher than those in the LF-LWB group, and the score for “Religious/Spiritual attitude” was significantly lower in the former than in the latter. These results suggest that some gerotranscendence factors are important for maintenance of psychological well-being in the frail oldest-old.
