[Subjective theories on luck and quality of life--results of explorative interviews with 65- to 74-year-old probands].

Following a subject-centred perspective in the research of happiness we asked N = 26 subjects aged 65 to 74 years in semistructured interviews about their subjective theories on happiness and quality of life (QOL) (subjective contents of the terms; description of a happy person; open wishes; causal attributions; control beliefs). Content analyses resulted in 28 categories that are united into 5 domains (personal resources, social resources and interaction, activity, material and environmental resources, abstract definitions). Particular aspects in content that have not yet been reported in the literature can be interpreted as notions of happiness and QOL specific to the elderly. Differences between the subjective concepts of "happiness" versus "QOL" are described. Ratings of semantic distance between the concepts "happiness", "QOL", "satisfaction", and "health" are analysed by multidimensional scaling. According to that, subjective representations of "happiness" and "QOL" vary markedly.