Empowering elderly Iranians through a social group work intervention: A trial study to assess the effect of the intervention on participants' quality of life

We designed and ran an empowerment-oriented social group work intervention to assess whether the intervention could improve the quality of life of older Iranians. The intervention consisted of nine group sessions that focused on capacity building and increasing individual competences, environmental resources and opportunities. Using a randomised controlled trial (RCT), 60 elderly people (30 men and 30 women in the intervention and control groups) from Social Services Centres in Tehran Municipality participated in this study. The WHOQOL-BREF instrument was used to measure quality of life, comparing before, after and follow-up measures between the groups and within each group. ANOVA and GEE tests were applied to analyse the data. The results showed significant progress in overall quality of life of the participants, particularly in the domains of physical health, psychological health, social relationships and environmental health. In pretest, there were no significant differences between the groups in terms of quality of life and its domains, but there were significant differences in the post- and follow-up tests. This study provides support for the empowerment-oriented social group work intervention with Iranian elderly people. This kind of intervention can be a useful model for empowering older people, especially in countries where social support and health services for seniors are not yet freely available.