Quality of life in children: A critical examination of concepts, approaches, issues, and future directions

Abstract

• Children deserve to experience a good quality of life (QOL).• We examine three main approaches for understanding children's QOL.• Issues and opportunities in research on children's QOL are discussed.• We conclude social indicators and subjective well-being best capture children's QOL.• QOL should be a universal indicator when we intend to advance well-being of children. a b s t r a c t a r t i c l e i n f o The quality of children's life is important both as an investment in the future of our society and because children constitute an important group of themselves and deserve to experience well-being presently. Quality of life (QOL) has been conceptualized and studied in children for several decades, but with disparate approaches that have rarely been discussed jointly with application to children in general. Here we describe and critically examine the three main approaches to children's QOL: health-related QOL (HRQOL), social indicators, and subjective wellbeing (SWB). Although this is not a review of instruments per se, we illustrate these approaches by describing their most prominent measures. Issues and opportunities in research on children's QOL are then discussed related to conceptual clarity, content specification, range of experience, subjective and objective perspectives, development in childhood, reporting source, and malleability of QOL. Finally, directions for advancing children's QOL are considered. We highlight the benefits of focusing on social indicators and SWB, rather than HRQOL, when representing this concept for children in general, the need for applying more sophisticated research strategies, and using QOL as a universal indicator of success whenever we intend to advance the well-being of children through intervention, programs, and policy.

Quality of life among adolescents living in residential youth care: do domain-specific self-esteem and psychopathology contribute?

“…The quality of children's lives is important as an investment in the future of a society, both because high QoL is associated with lower social charges and costs and because high QoL among all children is a goal in itself [12]. QoL is also a useful universal indicator of success whenever we intend to advance the well-being of children through intervention, programs, and policy [12]. Here, we define QoL as the subjectively perceived well-being and satisfaction with life according to one's own experience in different life domains [13].…”

“…Although negatively related to psychopathology [5][6][7], QoL appears to be distinct from it [8][9][10][11]. The quality of children's lives is important as an investment in the future of a society, both because high QoL is associated with lower social charges and costs and because high QoL among all children is a goal in itself [12]. QoL is also a useful universal indicator of success whenever we intend to advance the well-being of children through intervention, programs, and policy [12].…”

Influencia de la calidad de vida, la participación y la resiliencia en el desarrollo de alumnos de educación primaria

“…En concreto, los alumnos con NEAE participantes en este estudio declaran un bienestar emocional significativamente menor que sus compañeros sin ellas. Estos resultados son de suma relevancia para las trayectorias de desarrollo de unos y otros niños, si tenemos en cuenta los indicadores que definen dicha dimensión: satisfacción, autoconcepto, afectos positivos, espiritualidad y seguridad personal (Verdugo y Schalock, 2013;Wallander y Koot, 2016), y su relación con variables del entorno cercano para el logro de valores positivos en bienestar personal (Schalock y Verdugo, 2002. Además, estos hallazgos son consistentes con los obtenidos por Gómez-Vela (2007) con alumnos adolescentes con NEAE y sin ellas (de 12 a 18 años de edad), y ponen en evidencia que las diferencias en bienestar personal pueden también ocurrir a edades preadolescentes, en contraposición a los resultados obtenidos por Verdugo y Sabeh (2002) con alumnos de 8 a 11 años de edad, quienes no hallaron diferencias significativas en bienestar emocional entre alumnos con NEAE y sin ellas.…”

The role of loneliness in quality of life among children

“…In recent years, studies were developed to evaluate life quality of children. It is important to investigate the concept of life quality during childhood, because childhood experiences affect level of welfare in coming ages (Wallander & Koot, 2015).…”