Background. Older adults who lives in Bali may have social pressure in their lives. According to awig-awig banjar, rules that exist in every villages in Bali, every member of the village including older adults must help each others in conduct any religious rituals. This rules makes older adults has an activity even after the retirement. In other way, this rules also can make them feel lonely if they couldn’t fulfill the tasks. Loneliness, as a result of social pressure, may has contribution to older adults life in general. This study aimed to test life satisfaction in relation to loneliness, gender, age, marital status, and level of education.

Methods. The participants were older adults, aged 55 years and over, living in Bali (N = 313). Data were collected by giving the participants some questionnaires including Satisfaction With Life Scales (SWLS) and Loneliness Scales (LS). SWLS contains of five statements with seven different responses from strongly disagree to strongly agree. There were six statements in LS with three different responses. Among six items, three of them indicate social loneliness, and the rest indicate emotional loneliness. Outcome measures were analyzed through regression analysis.

Results. The result showed that 35% participants were satisfied with their lives and the other 65% were either in doubt or feel dissatisfied. More participants feels lonely (72%) and most of them were emotional loneliness type although they still live with their partner or family. Participants with older age (>75 years old) were more satisfied with their lives (63%) compared to participants with younger age (29%). Female participants showed more dissatisfied with their lives (82%) compared to male participants. Participants with higher education (undergraduate) were insignificantly different about life satisfaction (54%) compared to participants with lower education. Besides the descriptive analysis, regression analysis was made between loneliness and life satisfaction (R=.395, p<.05) and the regression formula was Y=33.938-.984(X).

Conclusions. The fact that regression formula showed negative correlation between loneliness and life satisfaction means loneliness can predict life dissatisfaction among older adults in Bali. This findings indicate that older adults needs to feel less lonely in order to satisfy more with their lives. Loneliness can be found also in older adults who lives with their loved ones because emotional loneliness can happened if someone feels empty even in a crowded situation. Social pressure as indicate in background of this study may contribute to help older adults has interactions with other people so they rarely feels social loneliness. This study was a pilot study that only showed loneliness as one predictor of life satisfaction. Meanwhile, there’s a lot more predictors that can be found in next research.

Keywords: life satisfaction; loneliness; older adults; Bali