Objective: A review of the literature of quality of life measurement in psychogeriatric research and clinical practice shows that area is not yet well researched. However, epidemiological studies as well as clinical studies, although not specifically focusing on elderly persons, contain information about aging and quality of life.
Design: Using both literature review and statistical analysis of available own data sets (e.g. German representative health survey using the SF-36 Health Survey instrument in over 7,000 persons, as well as a cohort study on quality of life in older patients with stroke, diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis in over 700 persons), relationships between aging and quality of life were examined.
Materials and Methods: In the review, key-words such as quality of life, geriatrics, ageing, elderly, health state were used, searching for a recent literature from 1990. Data analysis within own data sets used statistical methods such as analysis of variance, correlation analysis and regression.
Results: The review of the literature shows very few studies on interventions in geriatric populations with regard to quality of life, more information is available from the public health perspective. In geriatrics efforts to develop quality of life measures for the older population are on-going (e.g. WHOQOL-old-project). Results from own studies show an age specific deterioration of physical quality of life dimensions, which is especially pronounced in severe chronic disease.
Conclusion: Application of quality of life measures into psychogeriatric research and practice is relatively new. Tasks for the research community are to critically evaluate available measures, to specifically construct measures for differential in the geriatric population and to make them available for future research and clinical practice.
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