Introduction: Quality of Life (QOL) among elderly is a neglected issue especially in developing countries including India. Elderly people may suffer from the multiple health disorders due to the vulnerability for many physical and mental disturbances. Quality of life in elderly population can be affected by many environmental factors. The aim of this study was aimed to examine the quality of life in elderly people in Jammu, 2015.
Methods: Non-experimental, uni-variant descriptive design was used in this study. 40 males and females in the age group of 60-80 years from the old age home were selected through purposive sampling technique. World Health Organization Quality of Life-BRIEF (WHOQOL-BRIEF) questionnaire including 26 broad and comprehensive questions were used to determine the quality of life in elderly people. Descriptive and inferential statistics was used to find the results. Paired t-test was used to find correlation between the different domains of quality of life.
Results: Paired t-test was used to find statistical significant differences among different domains. Statistical significant differences were found among domain 1 & 2 i.e, physical health and psychological health (p = 0.008), domain 1 & 3 (p = 0.041), domain 2 & 4 (p = 0.002) and domain 3 & 4 (p = 0.025) and not significant among domain 1 & 4 (p = 0.913) and domain 2 & 3 (p = 0.623) at p< 0.05. Among the different domains, the highest mean and standard deviation of satisfaction were found for physical health (20.80 ± 3.763), followed by environmental domain (23.40 ± 4.005), psychological domain (16.52 ± 3.727) and social relationships domain (08.05 ± 2.591).
Conclusion: Among the four domains of quality of life, the physical domain had the highest score while the social domain had the lowest score. This emphasizes the need for more social support-related interventions in these homes. Policies and programs should be considered for improving the quality of life. Further studies are needed for assessing influential factors on the quality of life in elderly population.
