Components and determinants of quality of life in community-dwelling older adults

Abstract

The objectives of this study are to detect the main components of global quality of life (QoL) of community-dwelling older adults from their own perspective and to identify determinants of health-related and global QoL in the same population. This is a cross-sectional study covering a representative sample of 1,106 communitydwelling adults aged 60 years and older residing in Spain. The survey collected information on QoL through a face-toface interview asking for QoL components in free-format, as well as the completion of two QoL measures, the EQ-5D and the Personal Wellbeing Index. The most important QoL dimensions, according to the participants of this study, were health, family, and finances. Depression was the main determinant of both QoL indices, while functional independence and social support specifically influenced health-related and global QoL, respectively. Based on the perspective of the older adults as well as on statistical analysis, this work emphasizes the importance of health, family, and social support as areas of special interest in aging. There was a discrepancy when comparing findings related to the importance of financial status. Results also support that global and health-related QoL share some common determinants, but with different weights for functional independence and social support.Keywords Global quality of life Á Health-related quality of life Á Community-dwelling Á Older adults Á Multimethod data

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“…Social support (e.g. having help from friends) 8 and social engagement has a positive influence on health, QoL and life satisfaction and the opposite regarding low social support/social isolation [33,34,[127][128][129][130]. Thus, our results seem in accord with previous observations.…”

Sense of coherence and health of community-dwelling older adults in Spain

“…Therefore, self-ranked life satisfaction explained (Nesbitt and Heidrich, 2000;Borglin et al, 2006;Eriksson and Lindström, 2007;Virués-Ortega et al, 2007;Martínez-Martín et al, 2012).…”

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