Well-being

The veterans are a unique community shaped by past military experiences that may have positive and negative effects on their well-being as soldiers. With nearly half of the 18.4 million veterans in the United States living beyond 61 years, age-related physical and mental health conditions may impact the veterans’ well-being. Promoting veterans’ well-being has been studied extensively but literature on how they define it is scanty. It is critical to understand how veterans define well-being to inform future program development to address mental health needs. The purpose of this study is to discover the meaning and the lived experience of well-being among veterans. The methodology used for this study was a qualitative hermeneutic interpretative phenomenological approach to understand the meaning of veterans’ well-being. It allowed the phenomena to surface while exposing the essence of and the experience. The sampling method for recruiting participants was purposive sampling, with semi structured interviews conducted via ZOOM and direct observations at Veteran Service Organizations (VSOs) to obtain data. Fourteen veterans participated in this study, comprising eight males and six females with majority aged over 61 years. In terms of race/ethnicity, 64 % were White, 21% Hispanic and 15 % African American. With the use of Max van Manen’s analysis strategy, seven major themes emerged: (a) A Connection With A Special Bond To The Military Sisterhood/Brotherhood, (b) The Lingering Effects Of Military Service Continue To Simmer In Veteran life, (c) Feeling Grateful/Prideful Through Appreciation For Their Military Service, (d) Healthy Companionships/Relationships With Mutual Respect Yield Veteran Equilibrium, (e) Creating A Veteran Framily/Fraternity, (f) Self-fulfilment By Giving Back And Making A Life With A Purpose and (g) Veterans Living A Healthy Life Caring For Self. Six of the seven themes addressed the veterans’ well-being. The lingering effects have persisted and challenged the Veterans’ emotional well-being. However, they were able to express their military camaraderie even in the veterans’ life. Programs based on social relationships that allow connections with veterans and/or their significant others need to be established.

In 2014 Bodenheimer and Sinsky published the Quadruple Aim model, which argued that healthcare provider wellbeing was the missing link to improving patient and population health outcomes, as well as cost containment. Rather than treating burnout, however, experts in fields outside healthcare are finding validity in promoting thriving at work as a means to prevent burnout and improve employee satisfaction, engagement, and productivity. The purposes of this study were to investigate the relationship between thriving and emotional exhaustion (which is widely considered a core element of burnout) in healthcare providers, and the impact thriving had on primary care population health outcomes as measured by quantifiable value-based quality performance metrics. Using Georges' (2013) Emancipatory Theory of Compassion and Bodenheimer and Sinsky's Quadruple Aim as conceptual frameworks, this descriptive, non-experimental study used advanced applied biostatistical techniques to analyze archival data from the December 2018 UCHealth Physician and Advanced Practice Provider Voice Survey as well as provider performance scores from the same time period. Results of the study were mixed, showing that while there is an inverse relationship between thriving and emotional exhaustion in healthcare providers, thriving did not predict population health outcomes. By evaluating thriving in healthcare providers in relation to emotional exhaustion and in context of value-based health care delivery systems, this study was the first of its kind.

The purpose of this study was to assess overall life satisfaction of older adult women who have not had children. The study explored the following questions: (1) What is the overall sense of life satisfaction of childfree women over 65? (2) What is the lived experience of being a childfree woman in U.S. society? (3) How does being childfree inform women’s overall life satisfaction? This study utilized a phenomenological research design. Fourteen childfree women over the age of 65 participated in semistructured interviews aimed at gaining a deeper understanding of the sense of life satisfaction of childfree women in late life.
The study’s purpose was to look at the lived experiences of childfree older women and further understand their abilities to live fulfilled lives despite the absence of child bearing. This research explored the experiences of women without children and hopefully will inspire future research on the topic as well as inform practice regarding the unique experiences and perspectives of childfree women.

The purpose of this exploratory-descriptive study was to compare the different living arrangements of older Thai adults on healthy aging and well-being in those attending the elderly school. The specific aims of this study were (1) to describe demographic characteristics, and (2) to identify differences between the outcomes the Thai Healthy Aging Instrument (HAI) and the Personal Wellbeing Index (PWI) in older Thai adults 60 years and older based on the types of living arrangements. The Convoy Model of Social Relations was used as a guide for understanding the multifactorial nature of the social connection (Kahn & Antonucci, 1980). A convenience sampling design was used to recruit 139 participants living in Tambon Hua Ngom, Chiang Rai province, Thailand, for at least a year.
The sample included adults age 60 years and older who read and spoke Thais and had been participated in the elderly school at least once a month for one year. Among the participants (N = 139), 30 lived alone, and 109 lived with others. The findings of this study indicated that there were no statistically significant relationships between demographic characteristics between those who lived alone and those living with others, except for marital status. The participants living alone were more likely to be widowers compared to those living with others (p < .05).

Previous research suggests that self-reports of the frequency of events can vary dramatically. Minor changes in question format can result in major changes in the obtained results. The purpose of this study is to examine how changes in reference period, memory cue, and measurement scale affect participants' self-reports of conflict frequency. Additionally, the role of cognitive effort was examined to gain insight into the recall strategy used for different measures of conflict. Participants include 175 college undergraduates between the ages of 18-24, enrolled in psychology courses at Florida Atlantic University. Results indicate that reference period and memory cue form a significant interaction to create changes in reports of conflict frequency. Both reference period and memory cue act differently within the different conflict measurement scales. In the 0-10 or more scale, memory cue was statistically significant with higher rates of conflict reported in the cued condition than the uncued. In the open (fill in the blank) scale, there was a significant interaction between reference period and memory cue with the highest amount of conflict being reported in the one day/cued condition. The Likert scale behaved differently than the other two absolute frequency scales. Within the Likert scale there was a significant interaction between reference period and memory cue, however, the highest amount of conflict reported was in the two weeks/uncued condition. Finally, cognitive effort varied as a product of reference period, within both the 0-10 or more scale and the open scale with the two weeks condition eliciting higher reports of effort than the one day condition. These cognitive effort findings suggest that participants used enumeration as a recall strategy for the absolute frequency scales and estimation for the Likert scale.