Free Download Of Quality Of Life Scale

If someone were to ask you to charge per unit your quality of life on a scale of 1 to 10, how would you answer?

More importantly, what aspects of your life would you exist considering as you were selecting your rating?

If yous're unsure, you lot are non solitary.

In that location are many scholarly schools of thought regarding assessment of a person'south quality of life. Consequently, there are many meanings for the term which can refer to attitudes beyond several domains, including health, concrete operation, the family environs, and more than (Gill & Feinstein, 1994).

This article volition offer a brief review of quality-of-life definitions, explore the concept's applicability in the context of positive psychology, and outline five useful questionnaires to apply in practice.

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What is Quality of Life?

There is substantial debate in the literature about what is meant past the term "quality of life" (QOL), and there are several factors both in research and exercise that drive this ambiguity.

First, researchers often cannot define what they mean when they refer to the term QOL. Indeed, in a comprehensive review of 75 articles on the topic, only 11 (15%) defined the concept earlier proceeding with their investigation (Gill & Feinstein, 1994).

A 2nd issue is that people will vary regarding what they deem important for a quality life. For instance, 1 person may feel that a stiff network of close relationships is necessary for a quality life. In contrast, another person may exist inclined to forego such relationships in favor of personally meaningful activities or accomplishments, such as creative pursuits or professional person advocacy (Liu, 1976).

Finally, there is an overlap between the notions of QOL and life satisfaction, which researchers are nonetheless struggling to tease autonomously (Landesman, 1986).

4 Approaches to Defining Quality of Life

To address the above-mentioned challenges, Felce and Perry (1995) summarized iv approaches to defining QOL.

Starting time, QOL can exist thought of as the sum of a range of objectively measurable life conditions. That is, a person'due south QOL across a range of domains (due east.g., social relationships, physical health, personal circumstances, etc.) is determined numerically and so compared against a larger population distribution.

A second approach is to ascertain QOL every bit a person's satisfaction with the sum of these life conditions. The difference between this and the first arroyo is that personal welfare is based on a subjective reaction to life weather, rather than how a person'due south standing on these conditions compares numerically to others in a broader population.

Another approach is to define QOL as a combination of both objective life conditions and satisfaction with those conditions (Brown, Bayer, & MacFarlane, 1989)–essentially a combination of the approaches above.

A fourth and final approach, forwarded by Cummins (1992), conceptualizes QOL as an objective assessment of life conditions and subjective cess of satisfaction, weighted according to the significance an individual places on each particular domain.

To illustrate with an case, i might consider the office of income level and how it may affect (a) quality of life conditions and (b) life satisfaction. Regarding (a), income size may exist critical in contexts where i's welfare is dictated past annual bacon, such every bit in countries without strong social welfare systems. In this example, the size of income would be weighted highly as a factor influencing the quality of life conditions.

However, to a adequately non-materialistic person who has sufficient income to meet their bones needs, income size may merely be a minor contributor to life satisfaction (b). In this state of affairs, income would have a small-scale weighting regarding this second, satisfaction-related component of QOL (Felce & Perry, 1995).

Overall, this final approach to defining QOL is considered the strongest, every bit it is the only ane that ranks and applies weightings to the importance dissimilar people identify on aspects of their life state of affairs (Felce & Perry, 1995).

The Relevance of Quality of Life to Positive Psychology

The notion of QOL is specially relevant in the field of positive psychology.

The concept regards several aspects of personal welfare and wellbeing, and a person's attitudes toward various life circumstances and domains.

Likewise, positive psychology practitioners are ofttimes concerned with people's wellbeing and their satisfaction when assessing the different domains of their life.

These domains can include:

Mental and physical wellbeing;
Relationships with other people;
Social, community, and civic activities;
Personal development and fulfillment; and
Recreation and fun.

We can recall about the overlap between QOL and positive psychology by considering QOL's overlap with features of Martin Seligman's PERMA model.

The PERMA model is ane of the fundamental theories underlying the field of positive psychology, representing the five key domains in which a person may experience psychological wellbeing and happiness.

Amongst these, Seligman lists domains such equally Relationships, characterized by authentic connection, and Achievement, characterized by a sense of accomplishment in one's activities.

Information technology is articulate to run across that domains such as these, mirror several of the domains in which a person may rate their QOL. Therefore, there may be value in using QOL measures to tap into the various dimensions of positive psychology models such as PERMA.

How Can Nosotros Measure Quality of Life?

According to a review by Gill and Feinstein (1994), at that place are at least 150 instruments in existence to measure QOL. These scales can accept a multifariousness of dissimilar forms.

Some investigators, particularly in the medical context, will apply a single-detail assessment of QOL. An instance may exist an item such every bit "What is your quality of life?"

While ordinarily used, a weakness of such measures is that they do not tap into specific domains nor the relative importance people place on these domains.

In line with this, many researchers present a series of items (known as an instrument or alphabetize) to assess QOL. They will then make it at a last score for QOL by taking an average of these items.

Sometimes, such instruments may contain several subscales that tap into QOL across diverse domains, such every bit relationships, living weather, professional life, and so forth. In this situation, the person administering the different subscales then has two options for presenting the final scores (Gill & Feinstein, 1994).

The commencement option is to present the results of each of the subscales individually, forming a kind of profile. In this, the respondent volition receive feedback on how they fare on each of the private subscales, perhaps using a radar chart or series of bar graphs.

The second option is to take an boilerplate of the respondent's total scores beyond all the subscales to create a single blended score representing overall QOL.

The approach you choose in exercise should balance both the recommendations of scale creators and your clients' needs.

five Quality of Life Assessments

Now that you have a basic understanding of QOL, let's look at five useful questionnaires y'all tin apply in exercise.

These scales will vary in specificity, such that some drill down to assessing QOL in dissimilar domains, while others will serve equally a more concise, global assessment.

one. The Quality of Life Scale (Flanagan, 1978)

Flanagan's (1978) Quality of Life Scale (QOLS) is one of the most widely used QOL assessments, applied predominantly in the healthcare sector.

In developing the QOLS, Flanagan began by collecting responses to interview questions from 3,000 Americans, representing a wide range of ages, races, and backgrounds. In doing then, he aimed to pin down a definition of QOL as it related to a person's different life domains.

Several questions were asked, but amid them, participants were asked to call back life events that were especially satisfying to them or times when they witnessed harmful events that could detract from a person'south QOL.

These responses were filtered down to fifteen quality-of-life components (or domains), each represented by one item, using an anterior process.

Later, Burckhardt, Forest, Schultz, and Ziebarth (1989) added a sixteenth item, reflecting the notion of independence, or beingness able to care for oneself, afterwards qualitative evidence indicated that this was of import to particular subpopulations (e.yard., the chronically ill).

For each item, respondents indicate their satisfaction across each of the 16 domains on vii-indicate scales, where 1 equals 'terrible' and 7 equals 'delighted'.

The sixteen domains are as follows:

Higher-club domain: Physical and fabric wellbeing

Lower-level Domain	Defining Features
Textile wellbeing and financial security	Having proficient food, home, possessions, comforts, and expectations of these for the time to come.
Health and personal safety	Freedom from sickness, concrete and mental fitness, avoiding accidents and health hazards. Availability of constructive health treatment.

College-gild domain: Relations with other people

Lower-level Domain	Defining Features
Relations with spouse/partner	Beingness married/having a loving companion, sexual satisfaction, effective advice, and devotion.
Having and raising children	Becoming a parent, watching children develop, and enjoying spending time with one'south children.
Relations with parents, siblings, or other relatives	The presence of relatives with whom ane feels belonging. Enjoying spending fourth dimension with and visiting such relations.
Relations with friends	Having close friends with whom one shares activities, interests and views. Friendships are characterized by trust, support, beloved, and acceptance.

Higher-order domain: Social, Community, and Borough Activities

Lower-level Domain	Defining Features
Activities related to helping or encouraging other people	Efforts as an individual or as a fellow member of a group (east.g., a church building) to help others beyond ane's network of friends/relatives.
Activities related to local and national governments	Voting, staying informed through the media, having political, social and religious freedoms.

College-order domain: Personal Evolution and Fulfillment

Lower-level Domain	Defining Features
Intellectual evolution	Education access, ongoing mental stimulation/challenges, opportunities to ameliorate problem-solving ability, comprehension, etc., in or outside of schoolhouse.
Personal understanding and planning	The presence of guiding principles in i's life. Developing maturity, personal growth, agency over decisions and 1's life-course (sometimes involving religious or spiritual experiences).
Occupational role	Interesting, worthwhile work at habitation or in 1'southward formal job. Existence recognized for accomplishments and feeling competent at 1'due south tasks.
Creativity and personal expression	Expressing oneself or applying one'southward imagination via artistic pursuits, such equally writing, drama, music, etc.

Higher-guild domain: Recreation

Lower-level Domain	Defining Features
Socializing	Coming together new people, participating in social group activities, hosting/attending events.
Passive and observational recreational activities	Appreciating passive or relaxed recreational activities, such as reading, media, or sports events.
Active and participatory recreational activities	Enjoying agile recreational activities, such as travel, sports, nature activities, games, artistic activities, etc.

Higher-order domain: Independence

Lower-level Domain	Defining Features
Independence, doing for yourself	Remaining independent and being able to care for oneself, which is particularly relevant among populations with chronic illness.

A re-create of the total scale with scoring instructions can be accessed from the clinical assessment platform ePROVIDE. You can also access a convenient version of the scale, ready to administer to your clients, directly through our Positive Psychology Toolkit.

Regarding reliability and validity, the QOLS has been shown to be reliable and internally consistent across several studies (run into Burckhardt & Anderson, 2003; Burckhardt, Anderson, Archenholtz, & Hägg, 2003), suggesting the calibration can be confidently applied in research and practical settings.

2. McGill Quality of Life Questionnaire — Expanded (Cohen et al., 2019)

Published in 1996, the McGill Quality of Life Questionnaire (MQOL) was designed to assess the QOL of patients facing life-threatening illnesses. Today, the questionnaire is used extensively in palliative care enquiry.

While the original scale comprised only four dimensions, Cohen and colleagues' (2019) expanded version includes eight to better appraise the domains that people nearing the stop of their life report as important to their QOL.

Dissimilar the QOLS, several of the domains in the MQOL-Expanded (MQOL-E) are assessed using multiple items. The response anchors for the subscales vary past item but are always on an 11-point scale ranging from 0 to ten.

Example items from each of the subscales (and their scale anchors) are equally follows:

Subscale	Example Item	Minimum Scale Anchor (0)	Maximum Scale Anchor (10)
Physical	My physical symptoms (such as pain, nausea, tiredness and others) were:	No problem	A tremendous trouble
Psychological	I was depressed:	Not at all	Extremely
Existential	My life was:	Utterly meaningless and without purpose	Very purposeful and meaningful
Social	Advice with the people I care well-nigh was:	Hard	Very easy
Environment	My physical environment met my needs:	Not at all	Completely
Cognition	I was able to think clearly:	Seldom	Always
Health Care	Getting the information I needed from the health care team was:	Hard	Very piece of cake
Burden	I felt desperately about how my situation affected the people I care for:	Non at all	Completely

A re-create of the total scale can be found in the original article, published in the journal BMC Palliative Care.

The publishers of the MQOL-E found sufficient evidence for the internal consistency of the scale, equally well as its factor structure across the eight identified domains.

While these findings are promising, the authors acknowledge that there is more work to do to ostend the test-retest reliability of the scale, its convergent and discriminant validity, as well equally measurement invariance when administering the scale in different languages (Cohen et al., 2019).

iii. Health-Related Quality of Life Questionnaire (CDC, 2000)

Health-related quality of life (HRQOL) can exist divers as:

… aspects of overall quality of life that tin can be conspicuously shown to affect health–either concrete or mental.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC, 2000, p. 6)

The HRQOL Questionnaire combines three split up modules to assess perceptions of HRQOL. It is widely used past health professionals and was designed to span the gap between disciplines, such as sociology, psychology, and economics, almost the drivers of QOL. Information technology is for this reason that the questionnaire is fairly broad in its focus.

Rather than consisting of subscales, this questionnaire is made upwards of 3 modules. With this questionnaire, practitioners may choose to use just the modules relevant to their clients.

The get-go module is a compact and validated set of four items to assess HRQOL broadly. These items, referred to every bit the Cadre Salubrious Days Measures, were designed to be broadly applicable across a range of populations.

An example item from Module 1 is: "Would y'all say that in general your health is…" with responses ranging from 1 (excellent) to five (poor).

The second module is called the Activity Limitations Module, which assesses physical, mental, or emotional problems a person may face in their daily life.

The module begins by asking: "Are yous express in whatever way in whatsoever activities because of whatever impairment or health problem?"

If the respondent indicates 'yeah,' he or she will be prompted to continue the module, which goes on to assess the nature of the impairment, the elapsing of time that the damage has exerted limitations, and whether or not the respondent requires additional back up in terms of personal intendance or maintenance of routine as a upshot of their damage.

The terminal module is chosen the Healthy Days Symptoms Module. This module assesses how factors such as pain, depression and anxiety symptoms, insufficient sleep, and energy levels have affected operation over the past 30 days.

Several studies accept been published evidencing the validity of the HRQOL. To summarize, numerical responses have been found to exist internally consequent and reliable.

Responses take also been shown to correlate equally expected with other established measures related to health, such as the Medical Outcomes Study Short Form (Andresen, 1999; Newschaffer, 1998), thereby evidencing convergent validity.

Enquiry has also demonstrated that the scale can predict physical and mental wellness (CDC, 2000), evidencing predictive validity.

4. Globe Health Organization Quality of Life Instrument (WHO, 2012)

Some other trustworthy mensurate of QOL has been developed by The Globe Health Organization (WHO). The musical instrument is called the WHOQOL-BREF.

The WHO defines QOL equally:

… an private'southward perception of their position in life in the context of the culture and value systems in which they live and in relation to their goals, expectations, standards and concerns.

WHO, 2012, p. eleven

The WHOQOL-BREF is widely used for comparing indices of QOL beyond cultures. It is for this reason that the scale is available in over forty languages.

The instrument assesses QOL in the context of vi domains:

Physical health
Psychological health
Level of Independence
Social relationships
Environment
Spirituality/Religion/Personal beliefs

The instrument also contains several items assessing general health.

The response anchors for the subscales vary by item simply are always on a v-point calibration ranging from ane to 5.

A copy of the total scale can be accessed by completing a user's understanding at the University of Washington's website.

Regarding reliability and validity, the publishers of the scale field-tested the WHOQOL-BREF with a diverse sample of approximately 4,500 people, drawn from WHO's centers worldwide.

Based on this sample, the researchers establish evidence for internal consistency, discriminant validity, content validity, and exam-retest reliability, suggesting that the scale is suitable for use with populations across various cultures.

5. Global Quality of Life Scale (1996)

Finally, for an ultra-succinct and fascinating arroyo to assessing QOL, take a wait at Hyland and Sodergren's Global QOL calibration.

Rather than adopting a multi-dimensional (or multi-domain) approach similar several of the questionnaires in a higher place, Hyland and Sodergren (1996) argued that respondents can mentally apply their own weighting system when assessing the various facets of their life.

In doing so, they can make an overall judgment most their QOL by indicating a number on a calibration ranging from 100-0, where 100 is labeled 'Perfect quality of life,' and 0 is labeled 'Might every bit well be dead'.

Eight additional labels are positioned along the scale as follows:

95 = Near perfect quality of life
85 = Very good quality of life
70 = Skilful quality of life
57.5 = Moderately good quality of life
40 = Somewhat bad quality of life
27.5 = Bad quality of life
15 = Very bad quality of life
5 = Extremely bad quality of life

For a useful visual representation, take a look at Figure 1 (H4) in Hyland and Sodergren's original article, published in the periodical, Quality of Life Research.

How to Select the Best QOL Cess

Equally noted, there are at least 150 measures assessing QOL in existence (Gill & Feinstein, 1994).

Therefore, it is essential to do your research when selecting a scale to conform your needs as each calibration will have different strengths, weaknesses, and psychometric properties.

In many cases, scholars will lean toward choosing scales that are highly cited in reputable journals when designing research. While this approach may serve as a good rule of pollex, selecting a measure of QOL requires an actress level of due diligence.

For instance, QOL scales will differ in whether they are appropriate for longitudinal clinical trials versus cantankerous-sectional research.

You will also want to choose a scale that avoids what is known as floor and ceiling effects. A floor effect is a problem in your data that occurs when most of your subjects score near the bottom of a calibration. Also, ceiling effects are nowadays in data when the majority of respondents score most the meridian of a scale.

The trouble with either of these distributional characteristics is that your data will contain express variance. Put differently, your respondents will not have differed very much in how they take responded to your scale.

If you lot are planning on comparison scores between dissimilar populations, or groups who have been exposed to different interventions, this may be a trouble.

For a comprehensive guide on selecting the best QOL questionnaire for your needs, have a await at Hyland's (2003) Brief Guide to the Option of QOL Instrument, published in the journal, Health, and Quality of Life Outcomes.

A Take-Dwelling house Message

Hopefully, you now accept a better sense of how you might rate your own QOL and some of the domains you lot'll want to consider when selecting an appropriate rating.

While, at confront value, the term "quality of life" may seem a little general, you lot equally a researcher or practitioner have the selection to drill downwards to whatever level of domain specificity you want, depending on the assessment tool yous determine to employ.

More chiefly, past applying 1 of the assessments higher up, yous will gain a amend insight into the effect that factors like hurting, disease, or mental health weather condition may accept on your clients' daily operation. And this cognition will empower y'all to better tailor the support you provide to better their quality of life.

We hope y'all enjoyed reading this article. Don't forget to download our 3 Meaning and Valued Living Exercises for free.

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