Abstract:

As a key psychosocial resource, resilience can enhance the well-being of the elderly and thus promote successful aging. However, domestic and foreign studies show that, even if the same variable is selected as the predictors of well-being, the research results about the correlation coefficient of elders’ resilience and well-being are different. Since meta-analysis is a comprehensive analytical method for quantitative statistics of multiple research results that have the “same purpose” and are “independent of each other,” it can identify the moderators that influence changes in correlation coefficients among variables, thus providing insights into inconsistent and unexplored research results. Therefore, it is necessary to use the meta-analysis to explore why there is a large gap between the correlation coefficient of resilience and well-being of the elderly and the reasons for the large gap. Compared with children and adolescents, the self-awareness, cognitive ability, and sociality of the elderly tend to be stable due to the differences in the structure and performance of resilience among different age groups. Therefore, it is worth further demonstrating whether the results of the above two groups' resilience apply to the elderly. Secondly, the previous meta-analysis studies on the resilience of the elderly did not take into account the local context and only used the data from western countries. Whether the conclusions of the research apply to the Chinese context remains to be investigated. Finally, the previous meta-analysis did not take well-being as the outcome variable to explore the relationship between them. The actual relationship between resilience and well-being and what moderating factors influence the relationship could not be obtained. Is it true that older people with higher resilience will have a stronger sense of well-being? Therefore, this study adopts the method of meta-analysis, combined with empirical research results of domestic and foreign to avoid the single results caused by the error. It also thoroughly discusses the relationship between psychological resilience and the well-being of the elderly and its influencing factors, to improve the old well-being of achieving successful aging, which can provide a scientific basis for enriching the well-being theory. Specifically, this study conducted literature retrieval and screening by keyword search, subject search, and full-text search. There were 42 pieces of literature in Chinese and English, and 75 independent samples were included in the meta-analysis (N = 12,856). The results revealed significant positive relationships between elders’ resilience and their well-being, life satisfaction, positive emotions, and revealed a significant negative relationship between elders’ resilience and negative emotion. In addition, the relationships between resilience, well-being, satisfaction with life, positive emotions, and negative emotion were moderated by resilience measurements, cultural background, literature quality, year of the literature, sample size, and age of the sample. The results provided not only more accurate estimates for predicting elders’ well-being by resilience, but also insights for future research of successful aging. 

Key words: elders, resilience, well-being, meta-analysis