Browsing by Author "Salo, Netta"

The restrictions due the COVID-19 -pandemic had a significant influence on everyday life throughout the society. Especially the elderly, who have a higher risk for severe coronavirus disease, were affected by strict restrictions. The elderly aged over 70 years were obligated to avoid all social contacts outside home. As a result, also in the services for older people, visits of relatives were forbidden and free time activities were ceased. The wellbeing of the elderly during these restrictions has received increasing interest in the academic field. This thesis focuses on the customers of Finnish services for older people. The thesis aims to describe life satisfaction and everyday activity of the elderly during the pandemic. Furthermore, in the context of the pandemic, the relationship of everyday activity and life satisfaction is examined. The thesis first examines the existing literature about life satisfaction and everyday activity of the elderly. Also, the effects of the coronavirus pandemic are discussed. The primary database of references used in the review was Google Scholar. The empirical study was conducted on survey data collected by Finnish Institute of Health and Welfare via VANKO-project. The participants were both the customers of the elderly services (n=7440), and providers of elderly services (n=2950). Everyday activity and life satisfaction were examined through descriptive statistics, and linear regression analysis was used to examine the relationship of everyday activity and life satisfaction. The analyses were conducted with IBM SPSS Statistics. The study found that life satisfaction of the customers of Finnish elderly services was moderately high despite the pandemic. Moreover, majority of the participants were satisfied with the possibilities of physical activity during the pandemic. Also, experiences of insufficient amounts of physical activity did not correlate with lower life satisfaction. The results are aligned with previous studies that have also reported only minor effects between the pandemic and the wellbeing of the elderly. The strength of the study is an extensive sample of the customers of elderly services in Finland. However, the results of this thesis are not applicable outside the specific examined population. As a result, further studies on the subject are needed.