Active ageing, spirituality and quality of life: Implications on the design of elderly residential care facilities in Malaysia

Numbers of elderly in residential care are increasing and are expected to rise in the near future. Low quality of life among elderly is a growing concern worldwide, especially in residential care. Quality of life of the elderly living in residential care are very essential since they need to deal with the separation from a familiar home, family, friends, and their social networks. Being active and achieving spirituality needs can both impact on quality of life in residential care. It is essential to understand the interplay of residents’ attitudes, participation and the availability of interesting and appealing activities in maintaining well-being. Therefore, this study aimed to examine the relationship between active ageing, spirituality, and quality of life of elderly living in residential care facilities, to analyse the moderating effects of spirituality on the relationship between active ageing and quality of life, and finally to provide recommendations with the design of elderly care facilities in Malaysia. Respondents were 489 elderlies from twelve residential care facilities provided by Governments, NGOs, and Private. The descriptive and inferential statistics were analyzed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). Findings of the study showed that there were significant relationships between variables in the study. Active ageing and all dimensions of active ageing were positively related to quality of life of elderly living in residential care facilities. With regards to the spirituality and quality of life, this study confirms that three dimensions of spirituality named religious, inner peace and actively giving are positively related to quality of life. The findings also showed that spirituality does moderates the relationship between active ageing and quality of life of the elderly who is living in residential care facilities. Overall, this study demonstrated that all variables make a significant contribution to academic and practices, indicating the novelty of this study. Although there are some limitations that should be acknowledged in this research, it is of greater importance that this study has answered all research questions and achieved the research objectives and brought new findings to the knowledge and gerontology literature, as well as offering practical suggestions that can be used by residential care managers and policy makers.