The main objective of this study has been to know if the relationship between stress and elderly quality of life can be moderated by the meaning in life. Two hundred and ten participants with mean age of seventy four years old, most of them female (68.58%) took part in the study. The participants answered the following instruments: Mini Mental State Exam, Stressing Events Inventory, Elderly Quality of Life Questionnaire, Purpose in Life Test (PIL) and demographic questions. Principal component analysis, Pearson correlation coefficients and linear regressions were analyzed. The results obtained indicated that the influence of stress on quality of life is significant for the group with low meaning in life, but it was not the same for the group with high meaning in life. Thus, the meaning in life seems to have acted as a protective factor for the quality of life showing its moderating role with respect to stress.
Meaning in life; stress; quality of life; health; elderly
