Life satisfaction continues to be an important construct in the psychosocial study of ageing. It is one of the commonly-accepted subjective conditions of quality of life and seems to be one of the facets of successful ageing, both of which are key concepts in ageing. Research reports that life satisfaction is strongly related to socio-demographic and psychosocial variables. These, however, are mutually dependent interactive variables, and much more attention should be paid to the study of the relative contribution of these two types of factors to life satisfaction. The purpose of the research reported in this article was to discover which socio-demographic conditions and psychosocial factors are the most important, and to decide to what extent they contribute to life satisfaction. A sample of 507 individuals aged 65 and over and representative of the Spanish population in terms of age and gender, were interviewed at home. The results indicate that two socio-demographic characteristics (income and education) influence life satisfaction both directly and also indirectly, through psychosocial factors such as activity (physical activity level, satisfaction with leisure activities, and social contacts), perceived health and physical illness. Among psychosocial factors, activity and health both contribute to explaining life satisfaction. The results are discussed from the point of view of the activity theory of ageing.

Dans cette recherche, on éprouve un modèle structurel concernant l'impact du statut socioéconomique sur l'efficacité individuelle perçue et le rapport qu'elle entretient avec la perception de l'efficacité collective. Dans les travaux sociodémographiques, les jeunes, par comparaison aux plus âgés, s'estiment moins efficaces dans la gestion de leur vie professionnelle, de leurs relations intimes et de leur situation financière, mais plus aptes à promouvoir le changement social. Les hommes ont plus que les femmes le sentiment de pouvoir contribuer à la solution des problèmes sociaux. En accord avec le modèle structurel énoncé, le statut socioéconomique contribue à la fois à la perception de l'efficacité personnelle dans la gestion des événements de sa propre vie et dans la participation à l'amélioration de la société. Ces deux aspects de l'efficacité individuelle perçue contribuent à leur tour fortement à la conviction qu'une action collective peut effectivement induire le changement social. Un autre modèle où l'efficacité collective perçue devient la cause première de l'efficacité individuelle perçue se révéla moins proche des données recueillies.This study tested a structural model regarding the impact of socioeconomic status on people's perceived individual efficacy and its link to their perceived

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A review of several studies examining the lay concept of successful ageing and related concepts leads to the conclusion that elders from different cultures appear to agree on most of the components identified in the literature. From the research emerges a multidimensional conceptualisation of ‘successful ageing’ that is described on the basis of physical, emotional, cognitive and social domains, and which coincides with most theoretical and empirical definitions. The main goal of the present research is to study similarities and differences between concepts of ‘successful ageing’ in several Latin American and European countries and in two different age groups, and also to examine whether a similar structure of the lay concept can be found across both continents. The results show minor differences at item levels among countries, continents and age groups, and a similar internal structure across them.

Quality of Life (QoL) is a concept widely used in gerontology, as well as in other fields such as anthropology, health sciences, psychology, sociology and political sciences. Historically, although Aristotle is considered as an antecedent, the term QoL emerged in about the sixties in scientific literature. In the field of ageing, it is considered as an outcome of projects, programmes, services or policies and is used for describing populations, contexts and individuals. QoL is considered by most experts as a multidimensional concept involving multiple domains (health, psychological, social and environmental), containing objective and subjective components. Nevertheless, in recent years, QoL has been reduced to the subjective appraisal, to health or to subjective psychological attributes such as well-being, happiness or life satisfaction. Moreover, conceptual confusions can be found between QoL and other concepts related to positive ageing. In this conceptuallydriven paper, after reviewing a set of expert and lay conceptualizations of QoL and identifying the diversity of its components, three critical issues will be discussed: its reduction to health or to the subjective appraisal of a set of domains, the confusion of QoL with other subjective or positive concepts and, finally, its methodological reductionism to self-reports as an exclusive procedure for QoL data collection. From these criticisms some conceptual and methodological suggestions are proposed.