ABSTRACT

This study intended to investigate the effects of elderly learners’ personal characteristics, musical activities and depression on successful aging. The subjects were male and female elderly learners, aged 60 or older, who participated in a musical activity program of E Senior Welfare Service Center located in Seoul. The data collection was performed for a period of about a week in late May, 2018, and a total of 127 people were selected as final subjects for analysis. The SPSS 18.0 program was used for data analysis, and the effectiveness of the factors in this study was verified through frequency analysis, correlation analysis and multiple regression analysis. The results of the analysis are as follow. Frist, the analysis showed that the personal characteristics affecting elderly learners’ successful aging were presence of a spouse(yes) and subjective health condition. Second, among five variables related to musical activities, only “number of visits to musical performances” had a statistically significant effect on elderly learners’ successful aging. Third, the depression variable was found to be an important variable having a statistically significant effect on successful aging. The above results suggest that the central and local governments should cover more people in policy tasks and increase budgets for the elderly’s family welfare, health improvement and depression anagement, while making an effort to establish a support system for the elderly to enjoy musical culture, tailored to different life stages. Institutes, including, universities, facilities and education institutes for the elderly, welfare centers and health agencies, are required to facilitate elderly-tailored matching programs that can operate in connection with community participation and education activities. These programs should depart from stereotypical music programs offered by institutes and encourage the elderly to engage in continuing education as lifelong education throughout the entire life cycle so that the elderly can regain a positive self-image and successfully plan for later years.

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