Loneliness or Sociability: The Impact of Social Participation on the Mental Health of the Elderly Living Alone

Table 2

Effect of social participation on the mental health of the elderly living alone results of multiple ordinal logit regression.

Variables		Degree of depression		Anxiety level
		Model 1	Model 2	Model 3	Model 4
Independent variable
Social participation	Simple interaction class	−0.326; (0.103)	−0.304; (0.107)	−0.200; (0.105)	−0.233; (0.108)
	Fitness exercise class	0.181; (0.100)	0.123; (0.107)	−0.066; (0.104)	−0.037; (0.110)
	Self-entertainment class	0.650; (0.118)	0.486; (0.123)	0.337; (0.112)	0.276; (0.117)
	Organization group class	0.173; (0.122)	0.077; (0.145)	−0.021; (0.145)	0.047; (0.154)
	Family care class	0.070; (0.115)	0.095; (0.119)	0.085; (0.115)	0.152; (0.118)
	Intellectual participation class	0.159; (0.122)	−0.119; (−0.939)	0.023; (0.129)	0.033; (0.134)
Control variable
Demographic characteristics	Gender	0.125; (0.093)	−0.042; (0.106)	0.249; (0.097)	0.250; (0.109)
	Age	0.087; (0.102)	0.129; (0.106)	−0.155; (0.106)	−0.148; (0.110)
	Place of residence	−0.082; (0.091)	−0.166; (0.095)	−0.022; (0.092)	−0.058; (−0.095)
	Marital status	−0.258; (0.159)	−0.256; (0.163)	0.018; (0.165)	−0.012; (0.171)
	Level of education	−0.050; (0.091)	−0.042; (0.094)	−0.123; (0.093)	−0.124; (0.096)
Lifestyle	Smoking		0.403; (0.141)		0.045; (0.149)
	Drink		0.137; (0.236)		0.078; (0.146)
	Physical exercise		0.316; (0.107)		−0.141; (0.111)
Health status	Self-rated health	−1.201; (0.072)	−1.057; (0.075)	−0.864; (0.067)	−0.758; (0.071)
	Ability to take care of oneself	0.292; (0.105)	0.316; (0.109)	0.151; (0.103)	0.173; (0.106)
Socioeconomic characteristics	Economic conditions		−0.654; (0.092)		−0.435; (−0.092)
Cox and snell		0.210	0.239	0.103	0.109
Parallel line inspection

Note. , , and significant at the level of 1%, 5%, and 10%, respectively; the values in brackets are standard errors.