Evaluation of quality of life and vulnerability components of elderly women in rural areas Case study: Zanjan city

 Introduction: Increasing the population of the elderly, due to birth defects and improvement in people's health and life expectancy, has increased the need to pay attention to the problems of this group. Also, given the increasing trend of the elderly population in the world, and in particular, the developing countries The development of our country and the accompaniment of the aging phenomenon with the appearance of physical and mental disorders have increased the necessity of determining the quality of life of this stratum, as well as identifying the vulnerable components of women in rural areas to provide scientific and executive circles for maintaining and improving the quality of life of these strata. The purpose of this study is to investigate.  Method: The present study was carried out with a combination of two qualitative and quantitative approaches, including using focused discussion groups in the qualitative section, and performing factor analysis in the quantitative section. The population in the first stage is the qualitative approach of elderly women in 25 villages in Zanjan city. In these villages, the number of women over 65 is more than 15% of the total population. The women consist of 784 women in 25 villages of this city. Using a targeted and homogeneous sampling, 130 of these women were selected as samples. Qualitative content analysis method was used to analyze qualitative aspects. It was also used to collect quantitative data from a researcher made questionnaire that was extracted from the above. The method of collecting information was by face-to-face interview and using a questionnaire. Data were collected after encoding and analyzed using SPSS software and descriptive and analytic tests including mean, T single sample and Spearman correlation coefficient. Findings and Conclusion: The results of the research show that the socioeconomic factor with a specific value of 13.145 and the variance of 23.670 was the most important component of vulnerability of rural women. Measuring the quality of life and identifying the vulnerability components of rural elderly women lead to planning, prevention and rehabilitation in the field of improving their life. Physical dimension of elderly quality of life with such issues as education level, employment status, economic situation, housing and the presence of disease. Meaningful. Decreasing self-esteem and social value, powerlessness, lack of independence in deciding poverty trap is one of the most important components of vulnerability of elderly women in rural areas. In this regard, two major strategies for reducing these vulnerabilities can include the support of government organs and the empowerment of these elderly people. In the study area, social isolation is more likely to be problematic for women because their life span is generally higher than that of their spouses, which causes their vulnerability to varying degrees. In such situations, women are more likely to be exposed to psychological harm.