Definition, Measures, Applications, & Facts (2024)

quality of life, the degree to which an individual is healthy, comfortable, and able to participate in or enjoy life events. The term quality of life is inherently ambiguous, as it can refer both to the experience an individual has of his or her own life and to the living conditions in which individuals find themselves. Hence, quality of life is highly subjective. Whereas one person may define quality of life according to wealth or satisfaction with life, another person may define it in terms of capabilities (e.g., having the ability to live a good life in terms of emotional and physical well-being). A disabled person may report a high quality of life, whereas a healthy person who recently lost a job may report a low quality of life. Within the arena of health care, quality of life is viewed as multidimensional, encompassing emotional, physical, material, and social well-being.

Historical background

Academic interest in quality of life grew after World War II, when there was increasing awareness and recognition of social inequalities. This provided the impetus for social indicators research and subsequently for research on subjective well-being and quality of life. The patient’s view of his or her own health had long played some role in medical consultation; however, in terms of the health care literature, researchers did not begin collecting and reporting such data systematically until the 1960s.

Quality-of-life measures

There are several broad categories of quality-of-life measures. These include generic measures, which are designed to evaluate health-related quality of life in any group of patients (indeed, in any population sample); disease-specific measures, such as those designed to evaluate health-related quality of life in specific illness groups; and individualized measures, which allow the inclusion of aspects of life that are considered to be important by individual patients. Examples of quality-of-life measures include the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), the Sickness Impact Profile (SIP), and the 36-item Short Form Health Survey (SF-36). These measures cover a wide range of aspects of life that can be adversely affected by ill health, such as physical functioning, emotional well-being, and ability to undertake work and social activities. Disease-specific measures, such as the Arthritis Impact Measurement Scales (AIMS), the 39-item Parkinson’s Disease Questionnaire (PDQ-39), the Endometriosis Health Profile (EHP), and the 40-item Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Assessment Questionnaire (ALSAQ-40), are designed for use with specific patient groups and cover dimensions salient to those groups. Similar to generic measures, they address areas such as physical and emotional functioning. They also cover issues that may be predominant among patients with particular illnesses (e.g., feelings of loss of control, perceptions of social stigma).

Applications

A wide variety of uses have been suggested for quality-of-life data, but the most common applications are the assessment of treatment regimes in clinical trials and health surveys. Other applications include population and patient monitoring, screening, and improvement of doctor-patient communication. One of the most emotive uses of such data, however, is in the economic evaluation of health care, with some measures designed specifically to be used in cost-utility analyses—that is, analyses that attempt to determine the benefits of an intervention in terms of both length of life gained and quality of life. Perhaps the most widely used of these measures is the EuroQol 5D (EQ-5D), which addresses five dimensions of health: mobility, self-care, usual activities, pain/discomfort, and anxiety/depression. The five dimensions are divided into sublevels of patient-perceived problems (e.g., “no problems,” “severe problems”), from which a health state (or health profile) can be generated. The values attached to health states are based on responses from surveys of the general population and thus are intended to reflect societal views of the severity of each state. The EQ-5D can produce the quality-of-life component for the calculation of quality-adjusted life years (QALYs), in which quality of life is combined with years of life gained as a result of an intervention. Costs of treatment can be linked with the number of QALYs gained to give a cost per QALY.

Subjective versus outsider perspectives

Quality of life represents an aspect of health that is different from that generally measured using traditional methods of assessment, such as X-rays, blood tests, and clinical judgment. The latter have tended to dominate within health care and medicine in part because they are seen to be relatively objective. The measurement of quality of life incorporates the subjective views of the patient directly and can provide health care professionals with information that can supplement or, on occasion, contradict traditional assessments. For example, there is evidence that outsiders, such as doctors and relatives, view the quality of life of patients with serious disabilities more negatively than do the patients themselves. Also, in some instances, clinical assessments remain stable over time and yet patients report a worsening of their health. Such divergences between the perceptions of those in a given health state and the perceptions of outside observers highlight the limitations of basing assessments purely on observers’ assessments. The main purpose of the health care system is to increase the well-being of those it treats. This can be achieved only if patient views are incorporated into treatment evaluations, thereby ensuring that health and medical care are fully evidence-based.