THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN OBJECTIVE LIFE STATUS AND SUBJECTIVE LIFE SATISFACTION WITH QUALITY-OF-LIFE

A locally developed quality of life inventory was used to examine the relationship between objective life status and subjective satisfaction with quality of life in 8,550 participants from Hunan, China. The inv entory included 112 items in 4 dimensions-physical health, psychologic al health, social functional status, and living conditions. Objective life status was the principal factor affecting subjective satisfaction , but discrepancies were found in some participants, especially when o bjective status was at the extremes of the distribution. Young, urban, or more educated participants with higher scores on objective status often had lower subjective satisfaction scores in spite of comparative ly high objective status scores. Participants who ranked lower on obje ctive status (old, rural, or less educated people) sometimes ranked hi gher in subjective satisfaction. Scores for subjective satisfaction al ways showed a normal distribution, whatever the objective satisfaction of the population. Divergence between individual objective status and subjective satisfaction was associated with hierarchy of life needs a nd the reference standards used for the comparison.