THE EFFECTS OF A CONFIDANT AND A PEER GROUP ON THE WELL-BEING OF SINGLE ELDERS

A study of 100 elderly people was carried out to compare the predictio ns of well-being derived from the confidant model with those derived f orm the Weiss model. The confidant model predicts that the most import ant feature of a person's social network for the well-being of that pe rson is whether or not the person has a confidant. The Weiss model sta tes that different persons are needed to fulfill the different needs o f the person and in particular that a confidant is important to the ne ed for intimacy and emotional security while a peer group of social fr iends is needed to fulfill sociability and identity needs. The two mod els were evaluated by comparing the relative influence of the confidan t variable with the peer group variable on subject's well-being. Regre ssion analysis was carried out on the well-being measure using as pred ictor variables the confidant variable, peer group variable, age, heal th, and financial status. The confidant and peer group variables were of equal importance to well-being, thus confirming the Weiss model.