Social Networking and Emotional Support: A Research on the Elderly

Abstract

This article presents two researches developed by Occupation Therapy students involved in the Scientific Initiation Program at the University of Sorocaba, Brazil. Making use of a social and emotional selectivity perspective along with the social convoy theory, this research aimed at characterizing the social network and at identifying the source of social support on students from the University for the Third Age. The social network and emotional support are both important factors for the quality of life at the aging process. Forty two people over sixty years old were interviewed and the results led to a social network of nineteen people in average. Most of them were family members, intimate partners or friends that were rated by an affective scale, from closer to most distant. More women were mentioned than men and family people. Concerning the emotional support source, their daughters, middle age women, were the most mentioned, due to reliability.