[Quality of life and personality in older people university students.]

Abstract

Objective: Universities of the older population are centres of higher education where older people can acquire new knowledge, focusing on promoting the active participation of retired people. Participation in these universities enables learning and people who attend consider their health to be better because they are more active and motivated to learn, and have a positive self-image. This research aimed to explore on the one hand whether people attending this type of university have a good quality of life. On the other hand, what personality factors could be related to a good quality of life in these older adult students.

Methods: Quality of life was measured with the World Health Organization Quality of Lif-BREF (WHOQOL-BREF) questionnaire in 54 older university students in Spain. In addition, students' personality types were also assessed using Eysenck's Eysenck Personality Questionnaire-Revised EPQ-R questionnaire. Finally, the relationship between the different dimensions of personality and quality of life was studied. The statistical analyses performed were, in addition to the mean and standard deviation, the T-test to compare independent means as well as Pearson's correlations to correlate the dimensions of extraversion, neuroticism and psychoticism.

Results: This study showed that the University of the older population is an experience that is linked to a good quality of life with WHOQOL-BREF scores above 60. Also a high level of neuroticism and psychoticism are factors related to a poor quality of life (p<0.05).

Conclusions: From this study we can conclude that students at the University for Older Adults have, on the one hand, a high level of satisfaction with their overall quality of life, their general health, their physical health status, their psychological health status, their social relationships and their environment. On the other hand, they have a specific personal profile that scores relatively low in neuroticism and within the average population in extraversion and psychoticism.