How well do elderly people complete individualised quality of life measures: An exploratory study

This research note describes and discusses a study which investigated the f easibility of using an individualised approach to measure the quality of li fe (QoL) of a sample of older people who were in receipt of an early hospit al discharge service. Most participants (86%) were able to identify areas o f their lives which were important to them, rate their level of functioning on each of these areas and rank their life areas in order of importance. H owever, 39% were unable to quantify the relative importance of each area of life. Indeed, the majority (57%) of participants who were over 75 years ol d could not complete this 'weighting' or evaluative stage. The results sugg est that the phenomenological approach to measuring QoL may be employed suc cessfully with older people but that the 'weighting' system used by existin g individualised QoL measures needs to be refined, especially when assessin g people over 75.