Megnings of religiosity among community-dwelling elderly

OBJECTIVE: There was carried out a survey aimed at investigating the religious beliefs, the level of importance and the meanings related to religiosity according community-dwelling elderly aged 65 to 103. METHODS: Data were gathered from the data set of a survey about conditions of successful aging developed in a middle sized Brazilian town (n = 956). Among these, 361 (71% women, mean age = 71,6, DP = 8.3) answered questions about their religious beliefs, as well as about the level of importance and the meanings they associated to religiosity. The main themes derived from content analysis were submitted to statistical analysis comparing them to the other variables. RESULTS: The majority were Roman Catholic and attributed high value to religiosity in their life. The main themes associated to religiosity were: source of existential meaning, expression of cultural tradition, moral ruler, and coping strategy. There were not observed statistically significant differences due to gender and age, with exception of religion as coping strategy, more frequent among women, and religion as expression of cultural tradition, where the catholic scored higher. The main associations showed by correspondence analysis were: being Roman Catholic, women, aged 70 and more, strong beliefs toward religiosity as source of meaning or expression of cultural tradition and low frequency of beliefs on religiosity as source of transcendence; being non-religious, being men, being aged less than 70, emphasis on religiosity as moral ruler and as source of personal growth; being spiritualist and strong beliefs on religiosity as a quest for the transcendent.