Quality of Life Measures in the Elderly and Later Life

Abstract

Quality of life (QOL) is a long established concept that has proliferated across professional and academic disciplines, and is applied extensively in clinical research and practice around the world, in many fields of healthcare. The term is associated with a wide range of theoretical models, approaches to measurement and measures, which in healthcare alone encompass generic, health-related and disease-specific models. This diversity contributes to a huge literature on the subject, which can be difficult to find one’s way around, especially for the uninitiated. The purpose of this chapter is to review recent measures of quality of life for older people and to highlight their applicability for clinical research and evaluation. Distinguishing between measures of health status, functioning, HRQOL and QOL as it is generally understood, the content and psychometric properties of existing measures are considered in order that readers can make informed choices about the concepts and measures that are of relevance to them.