Abstract
Objectives: Identification of personal characteristics, family, social, economic and health of the elderly and evaluation of religiosity. Method: The study and a quantitative approach, descriptive and cross-sectional. The sample consisted of 400 elderly people divided into 5 groups, with 80 participants in each of them and that belonged to old age groups, exercised some religious function in the Catholic and evangelical church, informal caregivers and residing in Itajubá community and Pouso Alegre , MG. Results: We found that 58.5% were female; the average age was 69 years (SD ± 7.53); Education, 42% had incomplete primary education; 57.5% married; 65.3% Catholics; 54.8% retired; 83.5% lived in nuclear families, children average 3.77 (SD ± 2.45); Compared to 33% perceived their health "good" health; compared with the previous year it was considered "same thing" 42%; 59.5% considered better compared to people of the same age; 65.5% are patients with chronic disease; 69.5% were taking medication; 54% do physical exercise, Walking was the preferred type (41.8%) in the daily rate (19.5%). Assessing organizational religiosity, 43.5% went to temples, churches or religious gatherings. On non organizational religiosity, 51.7% devote their time to individual religious activities like prayer, prayers daily. The average intrinsic religiosity was equal to 4.73 which was considered great. The internal consistency of religiosity scale, through the Cronbach's alpha α = 0.871. Conclusion: It was concluded that the religiosity of the study participants were classified as "very good".