Status of social support and influencing factors among Chinese elderly aged 60 years and over: a meta-analysis / 中华健康管理学杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective To understand the current status of social support among the elderly,aged ≥60 years,as well as to identify influencing factors and to provide a reference for relevant health care services.Methods Publications about social support of the elderly were collected by searching the database of CNKI,VIP,Wanfang Data,Pubmed,and Web of Science.A random effects model was employed according to the results of heterogeneity (I2＞50％) to pool the extracted data.Results Thirty-two articles were included,with a total sample of 21 763 articles.Total scores of social support and three dimensions were low,with social support of 34.047 (95％CI32.532-35.563),subjective support of 19.218 (95％CI17.589-20.846),objective support of 7.787 (95％CI7.483-8.091),and support utilization of 7.075 (95％CI6.884-7.266).Scores of elderly with character of high age (aged 8030.907,95％CI28.378-33.436),female (32.512,95％CI30.723-34.300),low education (illiteracy32.088,95％CI30.944-33.231;primary school32.709,95％CI30.069-35.349),country side (33.780,95％CI31.523-36.038),empty nest (32.301,95％CI27.061-37.542) and incomplete marriage (discoverture27.044,95％CI24.652-29.437;divorced29.159,95％CI24.520-33.791) was lower than the others.Conclusions The current status of social support is not optimistic.Scores of social support and its dimensions were relatively low,and a significant difference was found between elderly of different character,indicating that health interventions should be implemented based on character.