Prapis Chanpuelksa. 1994.  Relationship Between Personality, Social
Engagement and 
Life Satisfaction of Thai Elderly in Bangkok.  Dissertation, M.S.
(Behavioral Seience) 
Behavioral Science Research  Institute. 


               The purposes  of this research was threefold,  (1)   to
examine the relationstip between personality (introvert-extrovert,
neurotic-emotional stability) socioeconomic status, social engagement and
life satisfaction  (2)  to search for factors which can perdict life 
satisfaction  in Thai elderly person and (3) to compare life satisfaction in
Thai elderly according to personality, socioeconomic status and social
enganement. 
               In this field study, the research sample consisted of 205
male and female Thai elderly person who were the members of social
science centre on Aging, and senior citizens association in Bangkok. Their
age ranged  from 60  to 74  years (mean age=66.88). 
These elderly were interviewed through a set of questionnaires. the
questionnaire consisted of 5 parts.The first part was used to measure
various background characteristics of the respondents. The second part was
to measure introvert-extrovert personality. The third part was to measure
neurotic-emotional stability personality. The fourth part was to assess social

engagement  consisting of the level of social activity and the level of ego
investment. In the final part life satisfaction was measured by the life
satisfaction Index A developed by 
Neugarten, and others. For data analysis, the pearson' s correlation,
stepwised multiple regression and analyses of variance (ANOVA) were
used. 
               The major findings can be summarized as
follows: 
          1.  Introvert-extrovert personality, neurotic-emotional stability
personality, income, 
social activety and ego investment were found to be positively correlated
with life satisfaction of the sampled elderly. 
                2.  When introvert-extrovert personality, neurotic-emotional
stability personality, social activity and ego investment were entered into
the stepwise regression model to predict 
life satisfaction, all variables accounted for 26% of variance in the life
satisfaction which was which was statestically significant. 
                3.  The elderly person who had low life satisfaction was found to
be introvert personality and revealed low level of social activity  neither in
ego investment nor social engagement. 
                4.  The elderly person who had high life satisfaction was found to
be emotional- 
stability personality as well as high level of social engagement. 
                5.  The elderly person who had high life satisfaction was found to
be in high level 
of education and high level of social engagement. 
                In conclusion, the findings indicated that introvert-extrovert
personality, emotional-stability personality and social engagement are
important predictors for life 
satisfaction of the Thai elderly in this research. 

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