Is church attendance associated with quality of life of older adults? Findings from a cross-sectional study in Poland

ABSTRACT

The aim of this study was to examine if church attendance was associated with quality of life (QoL) and feeling of loneliness among older adults in Poland, and if feeling of loneliness mediated the association. Face-to-face interviews were conducted with randomly selected community-dwelling individuals aged 65+ from the general population, hospital patients, and social service users. Church attendance was positively associated with QoL regardless of confounding factors. Older adults attending church frequently felt less lonely and evaluated their health better. Feeling of loneliness mediated the association between church attendance and QoL. Religiousness should be considered as an important determinant of healthy aging.

KEYWORDS:

• Church attendance
• healthy aging
• loneliness
• quality of life
• self-rated health

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Data availability

The raw data were generated at the Jagiellonian University Medical College. Derived data supporting the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author [A.S.] on request.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/15528030.2023.2186562.

Additional information

Funding

This work was funded by the National Science Centre Poland grant (2014/13/B/NZ7/02300). The sponsor had no involvement in the study design, collection, analysis, and interpretation of the data.