Is Quality of Life a Healthy Concept? Measuring and Understanding Life Experiences of Older People

The concept of quality of life has received considerable attention as an inclusive notion of health and as a basis for health interventions. The authors’ argument in this article is that notwithstanding this attention, little consensus exists as to definition of the term. In addition, a focus on measurement has led to the neglect of wider aspects of quality of life. Such difficulties are particularly relevant to the study of quality of life of older people. Analysis of interview data suggests that older people’s understandings of quality of life are not readily measurable and should be viewed in terms of phenomenological experience. The authors discuss the implications for studying quality of life of this group and difficulties for the concept itself.

• Publication year

  2004

• Venue

  Qualitative Health Research

• Publication date

  2004-09-01

• Fields of study

  Sociology, Medicine, Psychology

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1177/1049732304266738PMID 15296666
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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