Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine, Lausanne University Hospital, Lausanne, Switzerland.
Unité des services de santé, Institut universitaire de médecine sociale et préventive, Biopôle 2, SV-A, Bio2-00-161, Route de la Corniche 10, 1010, Lausanne, Switzerland.
Qual Life Res. 2019 Feb;28(2):421-428. doi: 10.1007/s11136-018-1983-4. Epub 2018 Sep 3.
Population aging is a global phenomenon requiring interventions to improve quality of life (QoL), a subjective and dynamic concept. Such interventions should be based on QoL domains considered as important from older people's viewpoint. It is unclear whether and how much these domains may vary over time as people age. This study aims to assess the importance of QoL domains, their pattern and determinants of change among the non-institutionalized older population over a 5-year period.
This longitudinal study included community-dwelling older adults (N = 1947, aged 68-77 years at baseline) from the Lausanne cohort 65+. In 2011 and 2016, participants rated the importance of 28 QoL items in seven domains. The difference between scores (0-100) of importance attributed to each QoL domain between two assessments was calculated and used as a dependent variable to assess the associations with covariates in multivariable analysis for each domain.
Importance scores slightly but significantly decreased in five of the seven QoL domains. Despite the majority of participants did not modify their ranking of importance for each QoL domain between the two time points, the proportion of change was still substantial. Bivariate and multivariable analyses showed that education and to a lesser extent age, living arrangement and morbidity, were associated with decrease in the importance of specific QoL domains; characteristics indicating vulnerability (e.g., low education or morbidity) were associated with a decline in the importance.
Although aging individuals modified the importance they give to the seven QoL domains, at population level, changes in opposite directions overall resulted in only small decline; importance seems less stable over time among individuals with vulnerable sociodemographic and health profiles.
人口老龄化是一个全球性现象，需要采取干预措施来提高生活质量（QoL），这是一个主观和动态的概念。这种干预措施应该基于从老年人角度来看被认为重要的 QoL 领域。目前还不清楚这些领域是否会随着人们的年龄增长而发生变化，以及变化的程度如何。本研究旨在评估非住院老年人在 5 年内 QoL 领域的重要性、变化模式及其决定因素。
这项纵向研究包括来自洛桑队列 65+的 1947 名社区居住的老年人（基线时年龄为 68-77 岁）。在 2011 年和 2016 年，参与者对七个领域的 28 个 QoL 项目的重要性进行了评分。两个评估之间对每个 QoL 领域的重要性评分之间的差异（0-100）被计算出来，并作为因变量，用于对每个领域的多变量分析中与协变量的关联进行评估。
七个 QoL 领域中有五个领域的重要性评分略有但显著下降。尽管大多数参与者在两个时间点之间没有改变对每个 QoL 领域的重要性排名，但变化的比例仍然很大。双变量和多变量分析表明，教育以及在较小程度上年龄、居住安排和发病率与特定 QoL 领域重要性的下降有关；脆弱性特征（例如低教育水平或发病率）与重要性下降有关。
尽管随着年龄的增长，个体对七个 QoL 领域的重要性进行了调整，但在人群水平上，总体上朝着相反的方向变化，导致只有微小的下降；脆弱的社会人口学和健康状况个体的重要性随时间似乎不太稳定。
