OLDER ADULTS AND FUNCTIONAL LITERACY NEEDS FOR SUCCESSFUL AGEING IN NIGERIA

Abstract

Living for at least five decades may come with different coping issues ranging from health to finance and having sustainable environment. Alleviating these challenges to enhance successful ageing in a nation with constantly increasing population of older adults require a level of literacy that goes beyond the ability to read, write and compute numerically. Therefore, this study investigated the functional literacy content needed by older adults based on the perspective of adults in two States of Nigeria. The study employed survey research design. The population of the study consisted of all adults who age 55 and above residing in Edo and Ondo State, Nigeria. The study utilized multistage sampling procedure of simple random sampling technique and inclusion criteria to select 200 sample size from the population. A 25-item close-ended questionnaire was used as instrument to collect data for the four research questions raised for the study. The research questions were answered descriptively using mean and standard deviation. Findings revealed among others that health, environmental and financial literacies are important for successful ageing. It was therefore recommended among others that adult education programme contents should be designed to enhance health, environmental and finance issues for successful ageing which will rub off on the nation.